


Approaching Terminal Velocity

by magpiespirit



Series: Partners in Time [3]
Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Angels and Demons Failing at Theological Discourse because They're Too Involved, Aziraphale Doesn't Play, Aziraphale is Scary, Character Growth, Cherub Aziraphale (Good Omens), Crawly is Angry at God, Crawly is Creepy, Crowley is Good at Making Things Difficult for Himself, Demons Are Generally Bad, Discorporation (Good Omens), Dysphoria, F/M, Falling In Love, Gen, Gratuitous Cherry-Picking, M/M, Metaphysical Sex, Possessive Behavior, Possible Triggering Content, Tab A Slot B? Not in This Den of Iniquity, Temporary Character Death, Unhealthy Relationships, lack of genitalia, moments in time
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-10
Updated: 2019-10-10
Packaged: 2020-12-02 02:36:32
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 11
Words: 29,337
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20972789
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/magpiespirit/pseuds/magpiespirit
Summary: To Crawly, Aziraphale is a beautiful, horrifying, precious object to be played with and challenged and adored hard enough to crack. Sometimes he gets discorporated for his troubles, and the intimacy of it would leave him breathless, if he had to breathe.Crowley, eventually, has some different ideas. They might be a little more dangerous.





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was difficult, because wholesome happiness (or at least hopeful angst) is my favorite, but this wouldn't leave me alone: that a demon and an angel would be awful, that they have to work hard for their happy ending. So this is quite unhealthy and I'm uncomfortable with it, but at least it's supposed to be canon-compliant so we all know how it eventually turns out. And really, they are nonhuman entities in an ill-defined supernatural line of work, so by our human metric they might be horrible, but by the standards of Heaven and Hell they're probably marshmallows. Please consider whether this is your cup of tea before reading. Regardless of the happy ending we all know they have, the journey from Eden to Armageddon is rocky and dangerous, and this installment doesn't take us all the way.

Of course things do not stay simple, no matter how nice that would be. Crawly wasn’t allowed anywhere near the Sol project, and when the sun touches Aziraphale, he belongs to God, the big ball of cruelty behind words of love, the Mother who would cast Her children from their own home for their first offense. Judging by her actions with Adam and Eve, She still hasn’t learned a better way to punish. 

Maybe that’s why She and Satan both leave the enforcement to their underlings. The Archangel Michael was a cold, calculating _terror _in the moments before everyone began to fall, and Satan might be scary in the abstract, but Ligur is an artist with a whip, and the less said about Hastur’s brain-devouring nightmares, the better. (Not that Crawly has actually spoken to Hastur _or _Ligur yet; hopefully he’ll never have to. His bosses are only dispatched when demons aren’t doing what they should.)

They’re still in the desert, but they don’t have to sleep together anymore; as the world grows, so too does God’s design, or so says the angel who keeps invading Crawly’s thoughts. Doesn’t make much sense to Crawly, but he suspects Aziraphale doesn’t actually know what he’s talking about, and is simply mimicking talking points as a self-soothing measure. Not like Crawly hasn’t done that himself. Keep the faith, and all that, even if “the faith” means different things to them. Mostly Crawly has faith in himself first, and Hell’s agenda as a sort of vague second well in the distance.

The sun is up and the afternoon is warm and Crawly has work to do.

_ “Look at that,”  _ he murmurs to the man in front of him. They’re close enough for this to be intimate; Crawly’s breath on the man’s throat, the space between them almost nothing. The man’s focus is on a trinket that another man — Crawly hates learning their names, it means getting attached, so he carefully does not know any humans even if they know him — always carries, some kind of pretty bag with a clever slippy knot. The angel is somewhere nearby, and Crawly can’t wait to lord over him that he tempted a man into theft before Aziraphale could stop it. “Look at him, just waving that thing around — none of  _ us _ have got one like that. And he won’t even tell anyone how he did it or let us look. Who does he think he is? He’s not smarter or better than you or me. You have more things to keep safe, don’t you? Why should you have to give him things just so he’ll make you one? The way he acts...he’s just asking for someone to take it from him and teach him a lesson.”

Demons don’t have much use for material possessions. Beyond very basic things like clothes, which they can magic up if they know how to access their demonic energies properly, there’s nothing they really  _ need.  _ But humans have a cute compulsion to collect and hoard objects, and, well, maybe demons do have that compulsion as well. Crawly would never let anyone take his angel away. He would fight Beelzebub if — he thinks Beelzebub’s finally settled on “zie,” which will be invented by humans in the future — tried to keep Crawly from playing with him. Crawly doesn’t even like sharing with God, but you can’t fight God, you can only steal from Her piece by piece like he’s doing now. Someday soon, all that glorious horror that’s been stuffed into a sack of human flesh will belong only to Crawly, and he’ll have a warrior of his own.

(Human children have already abstractly invented war games, even if humans aren’t numerous enough to understand war yet, but Crawly invented toy soldiers, so he still gets partial credit.)

“Yes,” Crawly’s target agrees absentmindedly, showing the signs of influence — it feels  _ good  _ to be free of inhibitions, to rationalize things that Ought Not Be Done, and the discerning eye can tell the moment it happens. He lurches forward, toward the intended victim. This is always the best part: when a temptation succeeds, and Crawly gets to enjoy the fruits of his labor. Hell gives him a hard time for being a soft touch, but humans are smarter than anybody gives them credit for; they reject foreign influences that don’t agree with what’s already going on inside. If most of the denizens of Hell had their way, Crawly would just be killing people. But that’s why he’s still here on Earth despite not being a true match for Aziraphale’s celestial might. Beelzebub, at least abstractly, understands the nuances of sin. A successful temptation  _ depends  _ on a soft touch. Otherwise it’s just a coercion.

God leads through fear. On Earth, as it was in Heaven, Crawly knows better.

He leans back against the low...well, it isn’t a wall yet, but it resembles one. The surprisingly quick spread of humans means each region is in different stages of development, but here, they’re just figuring this whole “village” thing out still. Adam and Eve had a bit of a problem with Eden-induced claustrophobia — Eve had spitefully told her children the Garden was a prison, and Adam hadn’t exactly argued — and refused to settle in one spot, but they’re gone now; people can do whatever they want. Folding his arms over his chest, Crawly smiles in anticipation.

He knows something’s wrong when his target becomes aggressive. Instead of slipping by, the way he ought to do, he draws his hand out of his pocket and,  _ oh,  _ this wasn’t the  _ plan,  _ and even as he moves to intervene, Crawly knows he’s too late to stop it: the sharpened stone goes straight into the victim’s throat. Well, that’s sure to draw Aziraphale’s attention, but Crawly probably can’t gloat now. He doesn’t like death. He doesn’t even really understand it. A person exists, and then they don’t, except they do, only elsewhere. They can’t come back like occult beings, but they also don’t have the same metaphysical restrictions that angels and demons do, and it’s all very confusing. His head aches trying to make sense of it. Crawly likes to prolong human lives as long as possible; not only does it give him more chances to tempt them, but he has to think about death less often.

This isn’t his fault, but for some reason it feels like it is, and he’s annoyed by that. It smacks of Aziraphale’s stupid logic, and Crawly’s meant to be corrupting him, not the other way around. 

It isn’t but a moment before he feels it: the occult pressure, the angelic danger. He’s always aware of it — Aziraphale’s usually the only angel on Earth, Crawly could probably track him blindfolded and hobbled from halfway across the world — but it’s oppressive when his angel is near. Maybe oppressive is the wrong word (most of the time, he finds it...oddly soothing), but right now, all of his danger senses are blaring at him to  _ get out.  _ He stays anyway.

Aziraphale approaches him from the side, self-assurance in his stride. At a glance, he doesn’t look particularly angry, just strangely focused after the turn of events. Did he watch the whole thing, or did he just catch the tail end? It’s so hard to tell with angels sometimes. Demons like to emote for the sake of rebellion, a subtle  _ fuck you  _ to the Almighty whose design they managed to alter, but he remembers how solemn he used to be. How solemn  _ Aziraphale  _ used to be, and usually still is. Even when he smiles, there’s something off about it, something awkward and clumsy, like he’s copying something he saw somewhere else and isn’t sure he’s doing it right.

Wrapped in loose white cloth like that, legs dusty and hair stuck in perpetual halfhearted curls, this ugly duckling of an occult being shouldn’t look dangerous. How unfair, then, that Crawly is spooked.

“I don’t suppose you could have done anything to stop him,” the angel laments, bracing his thighs against the wallish thing in a manner mostly, but not entirely, dissimilar to Crawly’s lazy lean. Stiff as always. He sighs and does something with his upper lip that makes him look cuter than he should. “Heaven knows I couldn’t reach him in time. Ever since Cain, there’s been more of this...I’d thought humans would be...well. Better than us.”

“Better than  _ angels,”  _ Crawly says, rather than asking, because it’s funny.

_ “Angels  _ split into factions and killed each other in great numbers,  _ demon.  _ Surely you remember. I’d hoped the humans would — would  _ not  _ do that. One can only hope they’ll recover their senses, don’t you think? It would be a shame for them to fall out of favor with the Almighty over something as petty as jealousy.”

Crawly finds himself suddenly, irrationally angry. It’s not an unholy idea; this is what God was saying, in Her own way. Lucifer wanted them to never have to feel this pain at all, to never suffer the horrors that were only abstract concepts back then. War and death were academic exercises, not  _ real,  _ but everybody knew they were awful, even nobodies like the nameless architect Crawly used to be. And God said She would be  _ testing  _ her new creations, putting them in situations that Lucifer said were unwinnable, and...well, not everyone was happy about that. It wasn’t, as the propaganda might have you believe, just about love for the New Ones in the works, but anger and jealousy at the gifts She planned to give them. They got the freedom to choose. If they didn’t want to worship and love Her, their hearts wouldn’t be forced to do it. And She would love them anyway, probably more than She loved Her angels. It wasn’t fair; it wasn’t  _ just.  _ How could She cast them aside after they helped Her build an entire universe? How could She be angry at angels who had new ideas when Her new creations were  _ built  _ to have their own ideas? Wouldn’t it be better to just build a lower tier of sentient beings, maybe even with new functions...and in return, the angels who built them could feel what it was like to be loved so completely? Why did She hoard that devotion? What gave Her the right?

And here Aziraphale is, cutting Crawly, digging with inexperienced fingers into the heart of the free will problem, like it hasn’t weighed on every demon’s mind since they fell. Since before the  _ War.  _ Everyone’s still jealous, only now, they’re confused, too. The smart ones, like Crawly, are still angry. There are  _ Implications. _

The humans have the freedom to choose to be good  _ or  _ bad, and — the confounding truth of things is that it’s Crawly’s job to whisper poison in their ears. But before the schism, there was no opposition. There was no adversary. Without Crawly, Eve might have eaten the apple, but maybe not. Even if she did, without demonic influence, there would be no  _ sin, _ only the forgetfulness of children. How could free will exist without the schism? Did She, in Her omniscience, see it all coming, and do nothing to stop it? Or did She just plan for all possibilities, keeping the New Ones in reserve for  _ if  _ the Morningstar did something She trusted him not to do? But why trust him if…?

(It’s at this point that his brain starts to hurt as much as it does when he tries to understand death. Give him astronomical architecture any day, but philosophical matters are beyond him. Maybe he’s just simple, but things that can’t be expressed mathematically are too complex.)

How can Aziraphale just say things like that and not feel sorry about it? He knows what Crawly is, why Crawly fell. Without thinking about any potential consequences, he snarls, “No, I  _ don’t _ think. I told him to do it. Said it would make him feel good. And he did it, because I’m temptation incarnate, and I’m good at what I do.”

“You...you don’t mean that.”

“Course I mean it,” he lies, “and this was a job well done. Theft  _ and _ killing.”

“I can’t  _ believe  _ you, Crawly,” says Aziraphale tightly, as though Crawly is actually someone with a better nature the angel can have faith in. 

“What, you thought I’d stopped being a demon? I’ll always do the wrong thing. In fact,” he boasts, coming up with a story on the spot, “I’ve got six more humans ready to kill for me. All I have to do is say the word and off they go.”

One minute there’s a respectful, if small, distance between them. The next, Aziraphale is  _ right there,  _ Crawly’s arm in a grip so tight he thinks his bones might break in two. The angel looks thunderous — odd, really, angels don’t usually go in for facial expressions. It’s beneath them. Earth is rubbing off on this one. How darling. How disgusting. “You know I can’t let you do that, Crawly. Mischief is one thing; they cause it on their own when you’re not here. But I can’t allow you to cause death. I do wish you hadn’t done this; I hate it when you force my hand. I don’t like discorporating you.”

“Why not?” Crawly struggles against the grip, so Aziraphale grabs just below Crawly’s other shoulder and pulls him away from the wall. There’s no escape from a hold like this without ripping his own arms off at different joints. This is why Aziraphale is Crawly’s favorite game, though: he’s a perfect little soldier, except when he forgets. He excuses demonic mayhem and then shows remorseless cruelty in neighboring sentences. The second struggle is for the aesthetic, and for the funny helpless feeling that spins him around inside. “I’m a demon. You’re an angel. We’re on opposite sides. Of course I’m going to make sure people get killed as much as possible, aren’t I?”

“When you are gone,” says the angel quietly, “the humans can feel it. They get restless. And your replacements are horrid. I have to dispatch them quickly just to protect our people. Now, I am very sorry to have to do this, and I’ll try to make your discorporation as painless as possible, but I’m also angry with you, so I’m going to break your arm first.”

_ And then he does,  _ and Satan, it’s like his arm’s been slathered with Holy Essence or...he doesn’t know,  _ something,  _ pain races up and down the limb and pools in the place where Aziraphale’s hand snapped his forearm, and he makes a noise that could only charitably be called a whimper. Most people would call it a shriek.

“That was unpleasant for both of us. I hope you’ve learned your lesson. Don’t do it again, and I won’t have to hurt you again,” the angel chides, and then reaches up—

He tastes brimstone.

“For the love of everything unholy,” says the receptionist, clearly irritated with him for getting discorporated again. He doesn’t even know what he died from. This time his death was so quick there was no pain or panic, only  _ blissful release _ from the searing pain.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Important note: There are people who weren't pulled from school for dumb reasons and those people are better-educated, and will cover historical events better than I ever could. These scenes, instead, take place away from history, unremembered and unrecorded.


	2. Chapter 2

In a budding village in what will eventually be called Mesopotamia, Crawly attends his target carefully. She’s a young girl now, only just fourteen, but in a few years, she’ll be someone to look out for, though Crawly has no idea in what capacity. A leader, perhaps, or a respected warrior? It doesn’t matter, it’s only his job to sabotage that. He’s been given free reign to compromise this however he likes, and he knows that most demons would either just snap her neck and be done with it or dispatch her another way — drag her out into the wilderness to die alone and afraid, or rip off a couple of limbs, maybe — but Crawly’s got Ideas. He’s got ideas and he’s got anger, too. It’s been 1100 years, give or take, since Eden fell, and there are humans all over the world, but they’re not as important as this one is, for whatever reason. Only Satan knows, or maybe Beelzebub, whoever the orders are coming from now.

“Did you know,” he says, looking up at her from his position at her feet, “that God is a man?”

The little warrior princess (or whatever she’s supposed to be) grins at him and kicks out a little, not to harm, but to play. He grabs her ankle and flicks her calf before tending to her foot with oils, which is what he was supposed to be doing in the first place, seeing as he’s technically something of a servant or caretaker at the moment. The girl insists on calling him  _ Treasure,  _ because of his long red hair and yellow eyes. Her mother, the Matriarch, has spoiled her daughter a bit, but the girl is kind and good, and that won’t change just by associating with a demon. Hell won’t have her unless she bends to the troubles of the world. That’s not the goal here; Crawly doesn’t care about her soul. It’s time to get ambitious.

“I’m serious,” he says softly, the suggestion spinning through the air and mingling with the scent of the oil. He kneads her instep with careful thumbs, associating the pleasant sensation with the new Idea. It’s always good to distract humans from something that sounds vaguely absurd — occult things refer to the Almighty in the feminine because it’s closer than any other qualifier, but God encompasses all things, all forms, all genders. She is literally, as Aziraphale is fond of saying, ineffable. “I’ve met Him. I was His servant, once. Still am, really.”

“Is that why you have such unusual eyes?”

Demons don’t tend to like kids because they’re loud and annoying, but Crawly likes them. They aren’t afraid to ask uncomfortable questions, and he really loves the way the adult humans shift and dance and do everything they can to avoid telling the truth. Every time an adult hits a child, they’re committing an act of evil; every time they lie only to break little hearts with the truth later, it is the same. Children are practically hatchling demons, inspiring sin just by existing. The little princess doesn’t need a story, but Crawly wants to give her one, so he levitates a few stones in a pretty circular pattern and says, “Yes. Do you think a regular human could get here so easily? I was given a new form to help me survive alone. Only...oh, I can’t do what I’m not  _ sure _ I’ve been tasked to do.”

She leans forward and places a hand on his head. “What is it, Treasure?”

“I was — I think — supposed to come and befriend you — convince you to give your Household Blessing to your brother. Only men are supposed to lead their families and their communities, so says the Will of God. But you,  _ you _ are patient and kind, and he is just the opposite. He would be a terrible Head of Household! There  _ must  _ have been some mistake! I’m only one lowly messenger, maybe I misunderstood...”

“They say that God does not make mistakes,” she refutes, scratching lightly along the crown of his head. He closes his eyes and briefly basks in the pleasure of her attention. She cares about everyone, even the people that others overlook, like the poor, castrated foreigner he’s pretending to be. It isn’t  _ all _ a fiction: Crawly has only ever been a servant to one master or another, and that’s all he will ever be, but he thinks that if God were like his little princess, then maybe he wouldn’t have fallen. She would have paid him a little more attention and he wouldn’t have had to march under Lucifer’s banner. “If that is what God says I must do, then it is what I will do.”

“But your family-”

“Will _thrive, _if it is God’s will,” she says gently. “It’s not for people like us to argue, is it? I can’t imagine being so arrogant as to think I, one of God’s many creations, know better than Sh-_He_ does about His own design. Oh, no! It all makes sense now. That other man, the traveler, _Azif- Azfar — Aziphrael, _oh, I can’t pronounce it, he was so insistent — said that God _Herself _wanted me to be blessed to lead and guide and protect not just my family, but my people — he must be working for the Adversary! Oh, my treasure, what am I to do? I let a demon curse me!”

Crawly wants to laugh and laugh at her horrified expression. Aziraphale is as far from a demon as you can get, but here they are, and all because Heaven relies too heavily on  _ Grace. _ This foolish, gullible, malleable girl is a perfect example of God’s oversight: faith in an unseen concept will always be challenged by trust in verifiable acts of solidarity. She’s a child, and children jump to conclusions even if those conclusions are silly. Of course, his little display of once-angelic power helped prove his story, but ultimately, that Crawly is a demon is irrelevant. 

The thing is, Crawly doesn’t actually  _ like  _ her brother. The man is quiet, a bit shifty — it’s not that he’s rude or brutish, but he’s at least triple her age, and he’s never once stepped in to stop anyone else from being rude or hurtful either. The girl, his target, is always the first to open her mouth against whatever she might perceive is injustice. This is just Crawly’s job; the girl will probably feel bad about being deceived by the terrible demon Aziraphale (ha!), do what Crawly’s suggested she do, fade into obscurity because she gave up her power, and upset God’s plan for this family a little. Hopefully spread stupid rumors as well. God’s plans for the humans were never gendered, because God could never be bothered with gender, and it might be amusing to see the locals running around trying to reorganize their society according to some imaginary edict. 

(He gives it two years before the rumors cease, if they catch on at all. There’s no way they’ll manage it, not with how much work there is to be done just for survival.)

“I’m sure you’ll do the right thing,” he says honestly. It’s in her nature; she always does what she thinks is right. She’s still a child, after all, only on the cusp of the age at which humans start seeing shades of grey. When she’s grown, she’ll probably be better off anyway; this Valley is getting violent. Leading a family in a region like this is asking for death. 

Three weeks later, Crawly pretends to wake at an unexpected commotion. Someone screams, and someone else treads on his hand, and he hisses in annoyance until he sees the brother, for the first time showing some emotion other than blank contemplation. He’s cradling his sister in his arms, looking down at her body, murmuring prayers to a God that until three weeks ago, he used a different term for. His sister’s Mark of Blessing rests against his neck, as it has since the ceremony two days ago.

Crawly wants to shed his skin, and he has no idea why. He never cared about the warrior princess, or whoever she was supposed to be. Not like demons  _ can  _ care about humans, or anything but themselves. It was just curiosity, like it’s always been. He’s done a good job, anyway. Maybe it’s time to go find Aziraphale and rub his nose in it: see,  _ angel?  _ Look what you did. One big blessing unraveled by a tiny spark of an idea. Too bad you didn’t stick around to save her from herself.

Yeah — it’s really not even Crawly’s fault, so he has nothing to apologize for. Not that he  _ would.  _ Demons don’t apologize for doing their jobs.

He can’t wait to see the look on his angel’s face…

But as it happens, Crawly doesn’t have to find Aziraphale; Aziraphale finds him as the demon follows the river to  _ anywhere  _ but there. He doesn’t like how he’s feeling. There’s a sort of desperate writhing in him that won’t settle on a direction, and for some reason he wants the angel to be angry the more he thinks about it. He wants a fight as much as he’s terrified to have one.

He discorporated Aziraphale once. He’ll say it was on purpose, but the truth is, there was a convenient unicorn and Crawly used it to his advantage. The look of utter outrage on the angel’s face was hilarious, but the outrage didn’t seem to stick; after a decade or so, he was back from Heaven with this new body, casually asking Crawly if there had been any new developments with the humans, and if he could pretty please  _ not  _ do that again, he’d appreciate it, filling out forms in triplicate was  _ so  _ tedious, and they still slept beneath the stars together until it wasn’t necessary to do so. This is not outrage. This is…

Crawly feels he ought to run, and this time he listens.

“Oh, no, you don’t,” Aziraphale snarls, catching Crawly by the hair and throwing him down on the dirt. There’s an edge here, something new and anticipatory thrumming through him he’s never felt. Nearly all the other times he’s fought Aziraphale — been  _ discorporated  _ by Aziraphale — it’s been impersonal, perfunctory,  _ so sorry, dear, but you know how it is, can’t let you burn the place down, drop in and see us when you get back to Earth.  _ This is not that. There’s ozone on Crawly’s tongue, like this angel’s going to smite him for real. No throwing him back into the Pits, but really, truly  _ erasing  _ him, and…

_ oh _

...it’s  _ delicious,  _ being the absolute center of Aziraphale’s world. It makes his knees wobble when he gets to his feet some distance away; that throw was  _ ridiculously  _ overpowered, which speaks to the amount of sheer anger directed at him. The sun is shining down on them both, but this angel’s wearing his mark anyway. A mark of wrath, like he’s about to shake the heavens and tear down every star Crawly ever touched just to make him  _ hurt.  _ Make him hurt like he made the warrior princess hurt.

(Maybe he wants it. Maybe he’ll feel better. But that’s a thought that  _ Crawly  _ will never entertain.)

“Do you,” asks Aziraphale, lunging for Crawly like a wild thing, “have  _ any  _ idea what you’ve  _ done?” _

Crawly spits dust out of his mouth  _ (dust, for all your days), _ which got in there when he bit through his lip, and darts to the side, hoping to lead the angel to water. There’s almost nothing around, out here, because even if you follow the river out, people don’t occupy every speck of space on Earth, at least not the way they’re slated to eventually. Blessed water is lethal to a demon, but the current won’t let the blessing stick; if he can trick Aziraphale into trying to bless the river, Crawly might be able to escape. 

“Don’t tell me you think she didn’t have a choice,  _ angel,”  _ he says, in the same tone he’s always used for the more condescending questions he asks: rhetorical ones, the kind of question he has an answer for but wants someone else to be embarrassed by. “Humans have free will. Not my fault you didn’t care enough to protect your investment.” A few more steps backward as the angel prepares to do something, probably something terrifying that Crawly (theoretically) wants no part of. “Who was she going to be, anyway? Prophet? Priestess? Diva? No, that’d be blas-”

“Giant-killer,” Aziraphale corrects sharply, and  _ calls down the blessed sky. _

It’s only due to a lucky leap that Crawly isn’t in the place he should have been when the lightning hits the ground, and even with all his enhanced durability, he can feel his incorporation straining to stay alive. He’s singed and rattled and not completely sure that he  _ is  _ alive, except that Aziraphale’s standing over him looking horrifyingly, beautifully  _ murderous,  _ and he never looks like this in Crawly’s idle memories. His teeth feel like they’re cracked. His eyes might be bleeding, maybe his ears too, but he either can’t move to check, or can’t tell that he’s moving.

Everything  _ hurts. _

He hopes Aziraphale can tell he wants to smile. He’s almost dead, but he feels so alive. If this is the last sight he ever sees, he’ll die...well, not happy, this isn’t happiness, but awake enough to interchange with ecstasy. It’s the closest to it any demon’s ever been, he’s sure of it. Humans have a word for this, or will have. He doesn’t know it.

(It’s norepinephrine.)

“Your side’s having just as much trouble with them,” the angel says softly, crouching down next to him. He brings a tiny blade out of thin air. Attached to the handle is the small cloth braid that the girl always wore on her wrist. Oh, this is just cruel. “Nobody knows yet who  _ recklessly  _ created the Nephilim, but neither of us can kill them, can we? Heaven thought a human might be able to. It took us, Uriel, Raphael, and me, an entire decade to write an equation that would incorporate enough power to do the job without killing the human in question, to be set in motion when she was  _ old enough  _ to handle it. And now she’s dead, because the  _ one time  _ it would have been useful for you to ask questions, you decided not to.”

Crawly makes some kind of noise. It’s not enough to ask why Aziraphale didn’t just  _ tell  _ him. He’d have backed off if he’d known, reported this assignment a failure and moved on. He’s not a complete idiot.

“Oh, don’t embarrass yourself with excuses, Crawly. My job is to protect humans. Your job is to harm them. I shouldn’t expect you to feel sorry for her death, or to feel any kind of remorse for the consequences. I really wish I didn’t have to get rid of you so often; it’s not your fault you’re bad, not anymore, not really. You’re right, it’s my fault for seeing something good in you that just isn’t there. I don’t know what we’re going to do now,” Aziraphale says, soothing and fretting in turns. Crawly wants to wriggle away, and he also wants to lean into the hand that’s idly caressing his cheek even though it hurts so much he might actually discorporate from the pain alone. “Hopefully there’s another human compatible with our solution. Otherwise we’ll have to get the Almighty involved, and She won’t like that.”

No, Crawly supposes She won’t. She only likes it when Her children are perfect, and obedient, and mindlessly adoring.

“Now, I’m going to send you back to Hell.” Aziraphale clicks his tongue and his voice takes on the tone of someone talking to a particularly naughty child. “Make sure to ponder on what you’ve done, and if you can’t be better in the future, at least try to be smarter. These are human souls, and we mustn’t be as stupid as this.”

The knife goes into Crawly’s throat, expelling his — whatever it is, not his soul exactly, but his  _ essence —  _ from his physical body. He is adrift in a state of shock and bliss, the weight of Aziraphale’s focus like a blanket protecting him from the usual scrambling panic of slow discorporation. He lets it happen. Instead of fighting to survive, he lets Hell recall him and drifts along in a current of imaginary Hellfire until he is, quite suddenly, standing on his own two feet in front of the low-level demon in charge of reception. Crawly’s never bothered to get her name, and right now she’s so blurry he’s not sure it’s even the same demon. It’s so hot down here. Nothing aches the way it should.

“You look like you just snorted angel dust,” she says flatly.

He feels like stars, so that makes sense. Sort of vaguely, he replies, “Just got — struck? By lightning? That Principality. Smittethed — smitten — past tense of smite. Threatened to do that. Got me with lightning. Get it?  _ Light _ ning. Hee.”

“For fuck’s sake, he’s a menace,” she grumbles, turning to dig out a stack of forms and a knife. “Better you than me. Three copies, True Sigil, three drops of blood on each page, you know the drill.”

“Drill,” Crawly says dopily, managing to drop every last page.

“GO.”

Crawly goes. The forms, who know better than to lay around on the floor of Reception where someone might catch them being lazy and demand an unpleasant favor for silence, follow.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oops, Crawly accidentally invented the patriarchy as a mean joke thinking it'd never catch on. Thousands of years later, a little kid will use a gay slur at a birthday party and Crowley will want to reach back in time and slap himself.


	3. Chapter 3

If you leave them alone long enough, humans will invariably list toward evil. It’s not really their fault; they just don’t want to think too much, and when there’s no proof that doing good will net them a greater reward, they’ll do what makes them feel best. Sometimes, that  _ is  _ what’s good. Mostly it’s what’s easy, and evil is generally easier.

Crawly takes shameless advantage of this. It’s been 300 years since his last discorporation — the lightning one — and he’s been taking responsibility for silly little hiccups in human nature. The humans decorate themselves and become vain? It was Crawly’s idea, even if God Herself might have had a hand in it (depending on who you ask). The humans call upon the powers of Hell and do nasty things to each other? It was Crawly’s idea. The upper echelons of Hell are taking note, and so is Aziraphale. He just hopes the angel hasn’t caught onto reality yet.

(Terrible, terrifying truth: Hell cannot steal souls.)

Demons cannot force someone to sin. It isn’t sin at all without informed consent. The lack of choice fundamentally removes the immorality from the action, leaving Heaven with a convenient victim to hold up as evidence of evil and Hell with nothing to show for their efforts. “The devil made me do it” is a human invention that makes the Dukes of Hell laugh and laugh until the walls bleed black; if Hell could take whatever they wanted, the world would be theirs. The most they can do is tantalize and titillate and tip the balance with encouragement. It isn’t Crawly’s job to ruin things. It’s simply to — loosen the hinges, so to speak. To make all the sins that much easier, that much more justifiable.

_ That’s _ for the humans, weak-willed creatures that they are. Crawly’s side project is harder. It’s taken him longer than he expected, but he thinks he has the measure of Aziraphale now. Angels are not humans, and can’t be tempted in the same way; it’s like ramming his head into a wall, and the strength of Aziraphale’s wall would crush Crawly’s skull before he made so much as a dent. But angels have inbuilt weaknesses. Euphemistic expressions bounce off Aziraphale like his mind is shielded, and moreover, he  _ cares;  _ that’s where the weakness lies. Crawly doesn’t have to suggest. With this angel, he can demand, and Aziraphale will have the choice to comply or get rid of Crawly.

After all, if a Cherub can’t best a low-level demon, maybe he’s not very angelic. That’s logical, right? That’s got to be how it works. Wouldn’t make sense otherwise. 

He slips into the little circle of privacy behind the angel (who’s not very good at pretending he’s not following a band of travelers), trails his fingertips over broad, firm shoulders, and murmurs into the quiet, “Of all the creatures Heaven has to offer, you are the strangest and most pitiful. So tell me, why do they keep sending you down here?”

“Oh. Is it just you under that hood, Crawly? I worried about bandits,” replies Aziraphale mildly, shaking off Crawly’s touch. Not the best start, but then, this isn’t that kind of venture. “Come, sit. Share the fire with me.”

Right. Because it’s nighttime, and Aziraphale belongs to Crawly when the stars touch him. It’s never been said, but it’s true all the same. His very own angel. None of the other demons can claim to have one of those. Not that he’s bothered to mention this grand accomplishment; he’d have to say how he did it, and he doesn’t know how it happened, not really. It just did. They were cold and lonely, and the stupid angel trusted God to protect him from a creature She can’t destroy. It doesn’t matter how many times they kill each other; Crawly will always come back, and Aziraphale will always let him — it’s what Crawly wants, so he should get it.

He sweeps his hood back, sits next to Aziraphale on the low rock, which is more comfortable than it strictly ought to be, and watches the flames cast shadows on the angel’s solemn face. Neither of them have returned to the Valley since Crawly’s discorporation — since that  _ awful, wonderful  _ fight — but that’s for the best. There’s nothing either of them can do. It’s been worrying them both, probably, but they are  _ nothing  _ in the face of the nightmares made by... _ somebody.  _ Nobody knows for sure which side was stupid enough to force themselves on God’s chosen, but Crawly’s bet is that there are some illicit pleasure-seekers in Heaven yet. There is a special section of Hell reserved for whoever did it; no demonhood for them, not until they’ve proven themselves.  _ If  _ they survive the torture in store for them.

“It’s funny,” Aziraphale says, cutting off Crawly’s train of thought. Good thing, too; he doesn’t want to think about it.

“What’s funny?”

“You always look the same. Pale skin, red hair, and...well, whatever your hips and spine are doing, I think they might’ve put you together a bit wrong. Not to say that it’s an unpleasant effect; you’ve gotten enough compliments from the locals to know that for yourself. I would have to fight to get the same body, were I to be discorporated again.”

_ This  _ is a safe topic, unlikely to make anybody upset. “For demons it’s a matter of putting yourself in order. ‘S like we all have several copies of the same meat suit waiting to be dispensed; variations on a theme, I could come back with no hair, or with breasts, if I wanted, but I’d always look like me. This is how I see myself on the inside, so it’s what I am on the outside, too.”

(Not, strictly speaking,  _ correct;  _ on the inside, Crawly is a serpent, but this is how he sees himself in bipedal form, so it’s not  _ incorrect,  _ either.)

“Ah. That would do it. I still see myself as a four-faced, four-winged creature with a piece of Wheel broken off inside of me. No variation of that fit for human vision,” says Aziraphale with a lot more humor in his voice than Crawly thinks he, personally, could manage.

He actually feels a little ill. So  _ that’s  _ what the angel meant by “mangled,” all those centuries ago; nobody in Hell (at least, nobody who would talk to Crawly) even knew who he was, so there was no help down there in figuring out the secret. He wasn’t much involved in the actual  _ fighting  _ part of the War in Heaven, mostly in charge of propaganda and recruitment (and running away very handily), but he once had the misfortune to witness a Cherub in battle mode. It, and the Wheel it rode inside of, moved in tandem, its flaming sword a terrible sight to behold. Wheels aren’t technically angels, having no minds of their own, but they do have some semblance of sentience, and to have one  _ broken off inside him... _ it would hurt to look at his celestial form, to try to see one being and accidentally see two. It would hurt to  _ exist,  _ forever, even if it heals perfectly. How can Aziraphale just say that like it’s the same kind of annoyance as someone stealing his favorite cup? “You —  _ Wheel —  _ er.”

“Oh, I don’t feel it when I’m in a human body. Even in my social form it only makes me limp a bit.” The angel brightens. “One of the perks of working as a Principality. It was a good decision, we all think so. I’m not in pain, nobody has to deal with m— anyhow, what brings you out here, Crawly? I thought you were near Jerusalem doing...oh, something or other with oil.”

Crawly shrugs, mind still on the outcome of the War, having taken note of and moved past the part where Aziraphale’s fellow angels apparently don’t like dealing with him — good ammunition for a future argument, but not for tonight’s venture. Because Crawly was on the losing side, it’s easy to forget that both sides took damage. He  _ likes _ the idea of having a damaged thing to play with, especially since his angel doesn’t really acknowledge the damage. It  _ must  _ be there somewhere, hiding itself the way wings and halos do. He wonders if there’s a place on this human incorporation he can press hard enough for Aziraphale to feel the Wheel digging into him. He’d probably get discorporated again, but it would be worth it for the few moments of focus (and the knowledge of a weakness). “Sodom’ll thrive without me. They’re starting to get a bit too modern, though; nobody likes to follow the rules anymore. Call me old-fashioned, but I’m meant to be the one causing chaos. I like to know what I’m going to get when I’m dealing with  _ humans.  _ You give them  _ one little factory  _ and suddenly they think they’re gods.”

“Oh, don’t complain to me about being too successful,” Aziraphale grumps. “Now I suspect I’ll have to go up there and put a stop to whatever mischief you caused, if they don’t sort themselves out in a century or two. You know the rules, Crawly — if you make too many waves, the Almighty will put an end to it, probably violently.”

“Who cares? They’re just humans. More cannon fodder for Hell in the End Times,” Crawly says disdainfully, rolling his eyes and looking into the fire. He doesn’t admit that he worries about it sometimes — about the dead girl, about the Valley. When the Almighty relocates the Valley, or whatever She’s planning to do to fix the Nephilim problem, all those humans will be lost, without homes, reliant on strangers to provide hospitality that is becoming rarer in this modern age. God never thinks about the collateral damage, he’s known that from the very first supernova.

“Do you not care about yourself? Or are you so devoted to Satan that you’ll die in service to his goals?” 

“Why would I care about myself,” he says slyly, “when I’ve got you to care about me instead? Really, you’re making me  _ blush.” _

Aziraphale says nothing, opting to stoke the fire in silence. It’s a healthy fire, unlike the type down in Hell; free of sulphur and demonic rage, it rests in its spot, warming them without much danger. Unlike Hellfire, this kind of fire could hurt Crawly, even discorporate him if it managed to burn enough of him, but it would be the same damage inflicted on Aziraphale. If they burned together, they’d both come back.

“It’s quite kind of you to consider me. Nobody does, you know — down in Hell I’m just a nobody. Expendable,” Crawly admits, a very delicate balance of modesty, flippancy, and urgency in his voice. 

“I’m not... _ considering  _ you,” Aziraphale returns, affronted. 

Crawly scoots closer and nudges the angel with his shoulder. “It’s all right, you can admit it. Who am I going to tell? Ah, yes, Most Holy Seraph Who I Regularly Talk To, just thought you should know your star Principality is being compassionate. Yes, water is also still wet. Sorry I can’t make it to dinner; tell Mother to fuck Herself for me, will you?”

“I can’t believe I am sitting here next to you.”

Crawly is pleased at his progress. Despite the mild distress radiating off the angel, he’s not actually  _ moving away,  _ and Crawly suspects — though he has no proof, and no way to test his suspicions, so there’s a chance it’s all in his head — that half the distress is because Aziraphale was actually amused by that stupid little performance. He glances over and sees the angel fiddling with the ring on his smallest finger, considers asking what it is, and decides he has a better question. “Why do you tell me these things, Aziraphale?”

“Sorry?”

“Your — injury. The way flesh bodies work for angels. If I  _ wanted, _ I could use it against you.”

The angel sighs fondly and puts a careful arm around Crawly’s shoulders, just like the humans do. It startles him enough to make him jump, but he grabs Aziraphale’s hand before the angel can get the wrong idea and move away. 

“My injury is only a liability in Heaven, and the flesh vessel issue should be common knowledge. Your Lord certainly knows how it works; Lucifer helped Michael theorize the mechanics. Anyone who might be able to, as you say,  _ use it against me,  _ already knows, but you were never a threat to me, Crawly,” the angel says genially. 

“I’ve discorporated you before,” he protests, wriggling, but this time it’s Aziraphale who won’t let him escape. He thinks about turning into a snake again, but doesn’t want to risk the embarrassment of getting stuck that way, even  _ if  _ it might give him an advantage. And he isn’t even sure it would.

“And it was very clever of you. The other angels had a good laugh at my clumsiness and ineptitude, and you got a good memory to carry around with you, and I learned that unicorns are agents of Hell, so really, everybody got something out of it, wouldn’t you say?”

He can’t win, can he? This angel could probably find something positive about falling from Grace, not that he ever would actually fall. That’s all right; he can still get what he wants tonight. His favorite game is making Aziraphale do things — well,  _ enticing  _ him  _ to  _ do things — and if nothing else, Crawly has proven to have an unexpected talent for escalation. Theft turns into killing. A little confusion over God’s (ineffable) appearance turns into a suicide to avoid Aziraphale’s “demonic” blessing. Everything that Crawly touches turns sour in the end. He’s the best at what he does, and someday he’ll have his reward from Satan and Aziraphale both.

He leans in, letting his angel pull him even closer by his shoulders. Neither of them are very physically inclined, as a rule, but sometimes the fire is warm and the stars are lovely and everything is in its right place. An enemy arm slung around his shoulders doesn’t feel like the soft, subtle, slow-choking chains of Hell, and whatever it is that keeps Aziraphale at a distance disappears. Crawly wants this; he wants trust. He wants direct access.

“You can’t say things like that when someone might hear,” he murmurs with a bow of his spine, turning his face and burying it in the angel’s chest.

A tighter squeeze, the lightest huff. “It’s only the truth, Crawly.”

“Sometimes the truth...it’s...you’re putting yourself in danger, being kind to me.” His lips brush lightly across the small patch of bare skin peeking through a rip in the robe. Aziraphale twitches, there’s no other word for it, but Crawly doesn’t let him retreat; he wraps his upper limbs around the angel’s torso, winding like two smaller serpents attached to the bigger one, and clutches at the fabric on the other side. He’s only playing at vulnerability, preying on Aziraphale’s kindness. Escalating, as he is prone to doing. This time he’s just choosing it before it chooses him. He calculates the correct amount of awe and worry and comes up with, “Not that I care what happens to you — but. Other angels are. Erm. They’d try to smite me. That’s all.”

The truth is, Crawly isn’t as good at the whole talking thing as he likes to pretend. He does well with the human temptations, because it’s work-related, and it’s variations on a script at this point. New projects are harder, and Aziraphale is the hardest of all, but it’s all right. Watching the humans has taught him that his particular set of vocalization issues are common to the shyest, most vulnerable ones. That might be even more enticing to the kind of angel who would shelter a wretched thing like Crawly from the first rain high on a garden wall. This angel—

_ This angel. _

Aziraphale gently gathers him as close as possible and rests his cheek on the crown of Crawly’s head, one thumb rubbing circles at the nape of his neck below the big tangle of curls his hair’s become. It feels good. He could end this game now, let the night rest on that thumb and this fire. If he looks up he’ll see his mark on his angel, his stars in the eyes God made. But he’s itchy and wanting now. He wants to continue, and what Crawly wants, Crawly should get, because nobody else is ever going to give it to him. 

There’s a nose at the shell of his ear and a low murmur just below, “A foul fiend like you shouldn’t be so sweet. Maybe we both have secrets.”

Crawly likes that one,  _ foul.  _ He likes  _ fiend,  _ too, and  _ vile,  _ and  _ evil,  _ and  _ wretched,  _ but the one time Aziraphale called him  _ unforgivable,  _ he spat poison and slapped the angel right across the face. It left deep purple claw marks that didn’t heal for ages and ages.

_ Sweet  _ feels weird, something hot and thready in his throat and fingertips, a tightening on his eyeballs. He wants to run away from it, but that wouldn’t work for his plan, so he only breathes carefully and answers, “M not sweet. Even if I  _ were,  _ you’re the only one I’d trust not to tell, so — so this would be the only time anyway. Just this. You make me feel safe.”

It isn’t true at all. Like this, Crawly feels as unsafe as a demon can be. But this is the specific kind of empty flattery that will dig into Aziraphale like sharp teeth into his side centuries ago. This time there’s venom. And all of this — it  _ is  _ dangerous. Crawly doesn’t want Aziraphale to fall. This angel is  _ his  _ angel, his favorite game, and if Aziraphale falls, he won’t be an angel anymore. He won’t belong to God anymore and there won’t be anything to mark or play with or steal. He’s not even really sure  _ what  _ he wants from Aziraphale, except his attention. It doesn’t feel safe because it isn’t, but it is thrilling. He wants…

The truth is, he wants Aziraphale. That’s all. Using the bony twist that comes along with being a serpent trapped in human form, he slides out of Aziraphale’s grasp, drops to his knees, looks up at the angel glowing with fire and kissed by stars. He looks confused, and moreso when Crawly peels his thighs apart to settle himself there and rest his head against that lovely, ugly, beautiful belly. It’s sad: this body isn’t as soft as the other one, and it’s nice and broad and muscular, but Crawly liked the promise of rolled flesh beneath the angel’s pristine white robe on the wall of Eden. His long arms surround Aziraphale and clasp in the back just above the swell of the angel’s hips, and there are probably words, but Crawly doesn’t pay them any mind. He’s too busy being disappointed by what’s missing.

Of course Aziraphale hasn’t bothered with genitalia. If he really thinks about it, Crawly isn’t sure why he thought the angel would; he doubts he’s ever bothered with it. Crawly doesn’t, himself. Any demon could change that, of course, with a thought, just dig into the angel’s essence a bit and pull out some functional equipment, but even if that were the kind of thing that didn’t turn his stomach, even if it could count as part of a temptation (and it couldn’t, it would be another coercion), why submit to the limitations of human forms? 

He wants to sink his hooks so deep into Aziraphale that he won’t escape without another scar inside him. Demonic powers were never meant to be used like this. Temptation is supposed to feel nice, empowering, but a few small tweaks and it can be blissful, too. He’s already got the angel where he needs to be, pliant, suggestible, but not so far under any spell that he doesn’t know what’s going on unless he’s just stupid. (Aziraphale is far from stupid. Five seconds after engaging him in any sort of intellectual conversation, most humans wish they hadn’t, and the ones who don’t, are just too arrogant to admit they’re lost.)

“You shelter me,” he says softly, kissing at the space where a navel would be, if angels had them. The hand goes back into his hair. “You protect me, even from myself.”

“I don’t think you understand what…” This warbling non-protest is hardly angelic. Is it the physical sensation, Crawly wonders, or the praise that’s making him crack? “Crawly. You  _ must  _ know I don’t want...payment for…”

He grins and lays two more kisses down, lacing his hand with Aziraphale’s free one, and continues, “I’ve watched you love the humans and God and angels and plants and all creatures great and small, from the very beginning, and I sometimes feel so  _ disgusting,  _ being the only thing on Earth that you don’t love. Could you? Someday, could you love me too? You say I’m a foul fiend, just a demon, but — hypothetically —  _ could you?” _

“Oh, _Crawly.” _Aziraphale’s hand tightens in his hair to the point of pain, but the pain isn’t particularly bad, or even new. It’s thrilling, like the danger of this game is thrilling, and so is the way that the angel is _looking _at him. Oh, those stars, that focus. He could drown in Aziraphale’s focus and thank him for the painful, terrifying discorporation. Angel, angel, angel, _paying attention to Crawly, _not paying attention to the all-seeing eyes of Heaven. Glory. “She made you too. Of course I love you. You are what you are, _demon,_ but you exist; I don’t have to like you always to love you always.”

This is delicious, because that’s not how it works, he remembers that much. Angels inspire love, they don’t feel it. They’re allowed to love and worship the Almighty, end of story; even the friendship between Lucifer and Michael bordered on obscene, and they were hardly as close as this. The secret feeling that Aziraphale is confessing is a  _ perversion,  _ almost a corruption of angelic design. It isn’t Crawly’s doing, but it’s certainly not Divine. It’s exactly what Crawly needs to twist. He reaches out with his own essence, a tiny tendril connecting him to an equally tiny piece of Aziraphale. It can only be a spark; an idea, a suggestion; but Aziraphale can do with that spark what he likes. Aloud, Crawly says shakily, “I wish I could feel it. Ever since I fell, I’ve been so cold and  _ empty.  _ If I were still an angel I could hear you sing your love into me from across the sea.”

(The bitterness is not an affectation. It’s old and new and potent enough to make him wish he were human enough to vomit it all out.)

“It could hurt you, if I made you feel it,” Aziraphale says. His voice is so light it almost doesn’t exist, but Crawly knows he’s not imagining it because the words splash onto his face in a breath that feels more intimate than most of the things he’s seen humans get up to.

“I want you to show me. The emptiness hurts more,” he admits desperately, and that, at least, is the unadulterated truth. Most demons touch each other a lot in Hell, just to get a contact hit of each other’s auras. When they get a chance to sleep, they sleep together in big piles, sharing what scraps of love-shaped feelings anybody’s managed to scrounge up. You’d think they’d fight over them, but demons know better than to fight over something so precious. There are no winners in that game.

If they knew what it felt like to have your very own angel…

The tiny spark ignites the way Crawly knew it would. Aziraphale has proven to be an absolute bastard, but he has these funny quirks; he does the caring thing that humans do. He might be awkward and strange and stiff and bad at emoting, but the emotions are  _ there,  _ Crawly knows, and — and he can  _ feel it,  _ oh, Satan, he can  _ feel it,  _ warm and pulsing and  _ alive.  _ There is no question here. Aziraphale loves him like he loves the humans he’s following, like he loves the plants and animals and God. He loves everything, and Crawly is part of everything again,  _ finally— _

_ It hurts,  _ it’s cold fire and hot blades and mallets on his pelvic joints—

And he  _ twists. _

He takes that euphoria, sips it, holds it, and gives it back, a shiny golden thing now laced with red-black demonic energy. It’s not quite lust, Crawly would need to know what that felt like in order to give it to an actual angel, but it’s lust’s quieter cousin, and Aziraphale won’t know the cause, but Crawly can see the moment it hits. His eyes go wide and his chest heaves with unnecessary breaths, and Crawly gets his hair pulled again, which is lovely too. He’s here between the angel’s legs, ready to fly or just fall into the sky, wherever this goes.

Sharing is not a reflux valve, it is an open door. The moment Aziraphale agreed to feed Crawly, he invited Crawly to return the favor, and he said himself that he knows what Crawly is, so this is — this is fine. It’s all part of the game. And it’s beautiful, the way Aziraphale shakes and gasps from the little pockets of demonic energy bursting inside him. It’s beautiful, the way Aziraphale is becoming loose in Crawly’s grip, leaning so far forward that Crawly has to kneel up to catch the angel’s head on his shoulder. All the love that Aziraphale has to give, Crawly can take and twist and give back, and it feels like swallowing the universe, like building another star, _look what I’ve done, _and it’s all he can do to stay upright.

_ You can’t have him,  _ he thinks, maybe at the whole world, maybe at God Herself.  _ He loves me. He put his wing over my head. He punished me. He’s wearing my stars. He makes me sure of my place. He’s mine. _

“Oh, Crawly,” the angel moans into his shoulder. “I feel…”

“You feel love,” he suggests, not entirely honest but not lying either.

“I feel  _ human,”  _ Aziraphale corrects. He quakes and shudders and digs his fingers into the demon’s upper arms hard enough that a human would have nasty, scary bruises. Crawly feels a wet warmth seep into the crook of his neck. Tears? That wasn’t part of the plan. “I don’t like it, I — I can’t make it  _ stop.  _ I can’t make it stop!”

The angel pushes with great strength, tipping himself backward. Crawly himself goes flying, only managing to avoid the fire by thinking very hard at the pieces involved that they ought to be elsewhere when he lands. Sparks fly from the separated pieces and the area goes darker. He scrambles to his feet, ready for a fight he didn’t expect, but to his surprise, Aziraphale’s still slumped over the rock, shaking,  _ clawing  _ at himself. His eyes are extra shiny from the tears, and Crawly memorizes the sight, just in case he never gets to see it again.

He edges forward, not sure he trusts Aziraphale to stay down. “...Angel?”

“It’s  _ too much.” _

This is unexpected. He’s not sure what to do. This was supposed to be fun. This was supposed to make his angel pay attention, to associate Crawly with good feelings so Aziraphale would want to be around him more often. He’d know if this were pain, because demons are naturally attuned to it, but whatever Crawly’s done, the result is only pain-adjacent — he edges closer, peers at the angel — _distress, _but not the usual type. Aziraphale writhes on the rock in some kind of semi-coherent fit, a fit that’s Crawly’s fault.

This was supposed to be  _ fun.  _ Any other demon would say that it  _ is  _ fun. Crawly isn’t sure why it’s upsetting  _ him,  _ too, but it is, and it tastes bad and his chest is far too hot. Shouldn’t he be lording this over the angel? Shouldn’t he be mocking Aziraphale, taking the opportunity to make him hurt? That’s what a demon is supposed to do. But — oh, but then the game would end for good, wouldn’t it? Aziraphale wouldn’t forgive him, and Crawly couldn’t handle that. He’s put too much effort into stealing pieces of his angel to lose them now.

“I don’t know what to do,” he admits, kneeling beside Aziraphale and grabbing the angel’s hand so he doesn’t wring his own like a fool. Silently, he adds,  _ Please tell me what to do. You always know. _

“It’s all getting so big, I can’t breathe,” Aziraphale babbles, looking at Crawly, but the demon gets the impression that he can’t actually  _ see  _ him. 

“You don’t need to breathe, idiot! I can...stab you? No, that’s stupid, what do I do? How do I fix it?” Panicking for real now, Crawly leans over to examine the angel’s throat. There isn’t anything blocking it, not that it should matter much to an occult thing like Aziraphale. “You’re the angel,  _ heal yourself!” _

Aziraphale’s other hand grabs Crawly around the nape of his neck, and before he can consider doing something other than flail ineffectively, he finds himself being kissed on the mouth.

“I’d rather you didn’t do that,” is what he’d like to say, but whatever syllables drip out of the cracks between their lips are jumbled, disjointed, meaningless. 

This isn’t going to help anything. Humans kiss each other all the time, for various reasons, and Crawly kissed Aziraphale’s belly, but that was before. It was only supposed to be a spark. This kind of kiss has  _ feedback.  _ He can’t feel Aziraphale’s distress, but he can feel the desperation, and for a bright, blinding moment, all he wants to do is kiss back, slither atop his angel and leave his scent-mark in the places the starlight can’t touch. He  _ almost  _ loses himself, until a tug on his hair pulls a yelp from his chest and he remembers they have a legitimate problem to address.

If Aziraphale can’t heal himself, he’ll have to just...get a new body. Crawly pulls out the knife he always keeps on his person and brings it to Aziraphale’s throat, but before he goes through with it, he grants himself one indulgence, and kisses the spot he’s going to stab.

“Heaven will know how to fix you. See you later, my angel,” he says, hoping it’s true.

It takes a moment for the brightness to fade from his chest. He clutches with blood-wet hands at the body, angry at himself for escalating without planning ahead far enough, angry at Aziraphale for being himself, but most of all angry at God. For a moment, even though it was scary and bizarre, Crawly had forgotten what it was like to be alone. He could feel Aziraphale inside him, and he was inside Aziraphale, some blend of temptation and divinity, and now…now, it’s just like before. As the angel fades, Crawly goes cold once again.

Empty. No grace and no glory. No one loves him, not here, not anymore.

Demons don’t cry, so he screams instead, his unholy noise frightening Aziraphale’s pet humans into fleeing in the night. When the sun comes up, he deals with the body, and then Crawly decides he’s never speaking to Aziraphale again. He could not bear to have this kind of Love ripped from him a third time. Better not to seek it out at all.


	4. Chapter 4

The stranger slips into Crawly’s tent. Their long, bony hands pluck at invisible strings and their reed-thin body seems to quiver with every move. Crawly’s kneeling, but if he weren’t, he thinks they might be only two-thirds his height. If it weren’t for the shock of platinum fluff and the unfortunate, otherworldly eyes trying as hard as they can to be plain brown ones, he wouldn’t even recognize this person as Aziraphale, Guardian of the Eastern Gate.

“Your aura’s a mess,” he informs the angel.

“I...ah. Oh. I see,” Aziraphale replies, just as messy as their aura. It’s all over the place — not in the way it usually is, like a beacon, but like it’s been disassembled and someone tried to stitch it back together using a bone needle and plant fibers rolled in animal fat. The form is strange, too; it’s like Aziraphale has only been half-made, or hasn’t grown all of the flesh they’re supposed to grow. The body is dangerously thin, spindly, and their skin might be the same as last time, were they not so sickly and faded and...well, Crawly’s cursed eyes pick up on spiritual damage first, so in such an unhealthy state, it’s hard to tell what Aziraphale  _ actually  _ looks like. This is their aura, but in pieces: it’s not what Crawly would associate with Aziraphale.

He still has a job to do so he gestures to them and asks, “Have you come to get your fortune told?”

He’s only in town for a few weeks to damage a young oracle; he’s set up a nice business pretending to be a fellow seer, “predicting” things and later making them happen with his demonic powers, but Crawly’s charging money for his services, playing on the humans’ tendency to assume that something which has been  _ assigned  _ value,  _ has  _ value. Oracles in this region are supposed to be respected figures; the boy has no other talents, and he hasn’t cultivated other skills. If he can’t win back the attention of his own people, he’ll have to do something else. Either the boy will get caught in a lie and break trust with the people he’s supposed to serve, or he won’t be a threat to Hell anymore...though  _ what  _ kind of threat a human would be to Hell, Crawly doesn’t know. It usually has to do with bloodlines.

Well, bloodlines, or just messing up whatever Heaven wants, which sometimes means incomplete intel. Crawly hopes this isn’t another situation like the giant-killer in the Valley. 

“I’m actually…” Aziraphale kneels heavily and breathes even moreso. Crawly doesn’t understand either of those things. It’s not like occult beings need these creature comforts, and when it’s just the two of them, it seems pointless to pretend. “I’m to eliminate the threat posed by a local oracle. I didn’t think it was  _ you.” _

“Well, that’s funny,” Crawly muses, folding his hands and leaning his chin on them. Aziraphale looks at him carefully, flicking their fingers again. What are they doing? Writing? Aziraphale’s done that in other forms as well. 

“What’s funny?”

“I’m supposed to be getting a human oracle out of the way too. He’s a threat to Hell. Any idea what’s so special about him?” Aziraphale opens their mouth, probably to say something about not giving the enemy information, so Crawly talks over their protest, “I don’t want this to end up like that girl in the Valley. Better to compare notes when we’ve both got the same assignment, yeah?”

“I suppose you’re right,” says the angel, looking supremely awkward. Crawly finds this adorable, though he isn’t sure why, and he’s annoyed with himself. He managed to go 23 years without even thinking about his angel, and within minutes of seeing them he’s already having stupid thoughts.

He raises an eyebrow. “So? What kind of seer is so powerful Heaven and Hell both want him gone?”

“As far as I know, he’s not particularly powerful at all. His prophecies are all normal. They’re vague enough to be self-fulfilling to whomever should hear them, and while they  _ are  _ real prophecies, he’s never said anything Earth-shattering. I can only imagine it must be about the bloodline. One of his offspring, or his offspring’s offspring, perhaps, might be the real target, and they don’t want to wait around.”

Crawly hates this kind of thing. It’s not that Heaven and Hell have actual prophetic visions; time simply isn’t linear for the ones who existed before God decided time  _ ought  _ to be linear, so plenty of angels and demons have knowledge they shouldn’t about things that are yet to come. It’s just frustratingly vague. Crawly knows why it’s funny to say  _ “That went down like a lead balloon,”  _ but he doesn’t know when humans are going to get around to inventing balloons, or even what balloons are  _ actually  _ made of. He and Aziraphale both instinctively know all the languages that are, have been, and will ever be, but for some reason Crawly can’t get his mouth to do anything involving a somewhat nasal language with a lot of soft palate sounds, and Aziraphale is terrible with a phlegmy one that drops its consonants all the time. There are other things, entirely human things, that come as complete surprises to everyone.

“There’s too much room for error when they do it early like this,” he muses, put out. And this scheme was going so well, too. 

“So you’ll kill him, then?”

Crawly scowls at Aziraphale across the tent, which suddenly seems too small for the two of them. “Of course not. If Heaven wants him dead, clearly he ought to live, for Hell’s sake.”

“But your side  _ wants  _ him dead,” argues the angel, “so  _ I  _ can’t kill him.”

The  _ I don’t  _ want  _ to kill him  _ goes unsaid on both sides. Aziraphale can’t vocally disobey Heaven, and Crawly’s supposed to like killing as much as the next demon. He does wonder if Aziraphale knows how different he is to other demons — at one point he’d have said yes, absolutely, but they’re frustratingly difficult to read, and Crawly’s tall tales do make him out to be a bit of a monster sometimes — but he can’t ask, so he doesn’t. It’s not like he cares about Aziraphale’s opinion of him.

“Then, what, neither of us kills him? He lives? Goes on to be a threat to us both?”

Aziraphale purses their lips. Crawly wonders whether Aziraphale intends to bother with a gender the way they usually do, or if they’re as tired of it as Crawly sometimes gets. He wonders this instead of remembering how it felt to have Aziraphale’s lips on his, back when the angel had a different set — instead of wondering what this set would feel like. That’s a stupid thing to wonder about. It was a horrible experience. It took him hours to bring himself to snap the body to ashes, and he felt the weight of Aziraphale’s lips for days after.

“I suppose,” says the angel, thankfully oblivious to Crawly’s thoughts, “we could relocate the boy. Send him up north somewhere. I know Heaven doesn’t have much business there for a long while yet, and the missive didn’t specify that I had to kill him, only make sure he couldn’t cause us any trouble. I don’t think I’d even be  _ allowed  _ to kill him should Heaven find out that Hell wants him dead anyway. I could arrange for safe travels, and we could bless him, or at least shield him from view. If he’s not anywhere near where Heaven and Hell are focused, he can’t do any harm, can he?”

“That’s a good alternative. It’s like I said before: a demon can get into trouble for doing the right thing, and if Heaven wants him eliminated, it’s probably the right thing to do,” Crawly says, not sure if he believes his own words. Aziraphale’s making perfect sense, of course, and Crawly doesn’t personally like the thought of killing kids. He  _ still  _ doesn’t understand death, and really, kids are more tolerable than adults. Crawly can think of half a dozen curses off the top of his head that will give the human oracle a fair bit of safety, even if they’ll make his life difficult. But he can’t help focusing on the cracks in Aziraphale’s aura, their washed-out presence, their skin-and-bones appearance. He frowns and adds, “But before we do that, you have to tell me what happened to you.”

“Nothing happened to me,” they say, looking genuinely confused.

Crawly snarls a bit. “What, your aura cracked into pieces all on its own, then? You  _ chose  _ this form? You decided you didn’t like the roomy ones after all?”

“Ah. Oh.  _ That.” _

Crawly waits. Aziraphale looks at the blank interior of Crawly’s tent and carefully says nothing. They settle their hands firmly on their thighs, but their hands move anyway when they explain, “It’s — I know it’s not your fault, necessarily, so I didn’t want to say anything. I vaguely recall you being as terrified as I was, so I can’t blame you for it. When you killed me, which I ought to thank you for, I was trapped in a...well, Raphael called it a bubble of lust. Humans have a mechanism that stops it naturally; their physiological systems are fully connected, but I disable most of mine, for convenience’s sake. This form is a punishment for allowing myself to be  _ tempted.  _ I couldn’t exactly explain the circumstances, so I let them keep their assumptions.”

“You  _ could  _ have told them it was all my fault,” Crawly offers, confused. He doesn’t see how that’s any different from getting discorporated in a fight. If anything, it might have given Aziraphale a little more prestige; in the face of demonic lust, they refused to give in, preferring death to sin. Not that lust  _ is  _ a sin, not really, but acting on it with a  _ demon _ probably would be. 

Aziraphale laughs lightly. “After you knelt at my feet and thanked me for protecting you? My job is to thwart the evil you stir up, Crawly. I don’t want my job to change to actively hunting  _ you.  _ I won’t fail Heaven, but I’ve never killed anybody, not even in the Great War, and I don’t intend to start now. Which brings us back to the boy.”

“To clarify,” Crawly says, trying and failing to reconcile his angel with the violent tales of the Cherubim, “the cracks in your aura aren’t some kind of...danger sign? You’re not going to fall?”

_ “Fall?  _ Don’t be silly — it’s just a side effect of trying to stuff myself into this tiny body. Are you going to stand in the way of my plan? I’d rather not fight you today, if it’s all the same to you.”

This time, Crawly actually believes it.

“I’m helping you, obviously,” he replies with a roll of his eyes. 

_ “Just this once,  _ we’ll work together, and only because we’re at a complete stalemate. Agreed?”

“Agreed.”

They nod at each other, and Crawly wonders if Aziraphale is as uneasy as he is.

  
  


Two days later, they say goodbye to the oracle. He’s only twelve, but he’s tall, and he’s wearing a talisman that should keep him safe from any human who tries to hurt him. Crawly touches the boy’s shoulder and performs the easiest, and safest, curse. “No matter where you are, no matter what you say, your prophecies will be seen as nonsense. You and your descendants will be outcasts, because they’ll all think you are crazy.”

Aziraphale makes a noise of outrage and elbows Crawly out of the way, making him grin, even though their blessing is much nicer. “You will live a long and peaceful life, and your descendants will not be found by the agents of Heaven and Hell, should they try to look for any of you.”

“You’re both strange,” says the oracle, “but I knew this would happen, so I can only thank you.”

Because of the nature of the blessing, both angel and demon forget this meeting entirely when they go their separate ways.


	5. Chapter 5

It’s been 60 years since they last met, since Crawly discorporated his angel by the fire, and Aziraphale — for that _ is _who it is, even if their aura is cracked all to Hell, even if they look sickly, all knobbly joints and stick-thin limbs and skin that looks like death itself tried to take them before their time — looks, and feels, disturbing. There’s something appealing about such an uncomfortable form. Crawly’s angel, finally brought low by...he’s not certain, but they might say it if he asks.

He’ll have to wait. His angel is oh so very busy.

Crawly has never witnessed an inspiration before. He’s been around during a blessing — very boring, not much to see, it’s as based on human reaction as temptation is — but Divine Inspiration is a whole different phenomenon. There’s power behind it. Apparently, Aziraphale is the Principality over artistic expression; that’s amusing, but Crawly supposes he doesn’t often see his angel when they’re not at odds, or if he does, it’s not very long until they _ are _at odds. He has no idea what his angel gets up to when he’s not being all smite-ish.

He hides his body around the corner of a structure the locals use as a common area, peeking out at the scene. It looks indecent: this man-shaped but obviously inhuman creature standing over a young woman, not quite touching her but clearly doing something to keep her under a spell. _Crawly _knows they’re praying, because he recognizes the gestures and the shift in the air that signals significant power building up, but anyone else would chase Aziraphale off, assuming some kind of evil intentions. Aziraphale finishes the prayer, brings their fingers to their lips, and releases their power in a Divine song. Crawly can tell, because it washes over the whole village. The girl’s eyes snap open and she looks up at Aziraphale through tears, no doubt envisioning all the things she’ll do and create, and all the humans in the immediate vicinity relax, like all of their troubles have been taken off their shoulders, but Crawly is not human, and he is not affected like they are.

He feels...he _ feels. _ There’s a floaty thing inside him, filling up the empty spaces, and he wants more of it. He wants Aziraphale, in all their ugly, wonderful, patchy glory, wants to suck all the light out of them and blow it back. He wants the feedback that neither of them could handle that night by the fire, because he’s inspired: he _ understands _it now. He could control it now, if he wanted. He could feed his angel to bursting and take it back, make them lose time, make them lose sense—

Aziraphale must feel him tugging, because they look around, zero in on him, and hurry toward him. Ha! — _ Heaven _ doesn’t get all this attention, do they? They don’t deserve this feeling, they’re stupid and boring. Crawly’s the one with an imagination. It’s why he was cast out, isn’t it? For daring to have an opinion? He wants that song for himself, and he should get it. It’s midday, but God’s had Aziraphale to Herself for so long. Surely Crawly can have just a _ little _ time. Nobody will know. She’s too busy testing mortal fools to keep an eye on one little demon and the angel he’s been stealing piece by piece. _ Look at me. Don’t stop looking, never stop looking. _

“Crawly,” they say, reaching out and up in concern. They touch the pad of their thumb to the apple of his cheek and it’s fire all along the veins Crawly was _ sure _he disabled. He presses his fingers to the wall behind him, feeling it give under the force of his want, but his angel doesn’t seem to notice any of this, only asks, “What’s happened to your eyes?”

“M— th— nn,” he says, tripping over half-formed thoughts and the bright sound of _ Aziraphale _clinging to his tongue. It’s easier to close his eyes and tilt his head to seek out more contact, so he does, and his angel obliges, because why wouldn’t they? How could they know what they’re doing to him? 

“Have you been hurt?”

“Not hurt,” he says viciously, grasping Aziraphale’s free wrist in a grip that hurts his hand as much as it probably hurts them. Aziraphale pulls back, but this form is _ fragile. _Their aura is piecemeal, stitched together poorly, and using all that Grace has left them vulnerable. Crawly could do anything. Rip their arms off, drag them to Hell, throw them into a hole and leave them there. He does none of those things, choosing instead to open his eyes and spin them around, pressing Aziraphale tight against the wall. He leans down and tells them, “I know how to take you apart.”

Maybe it’s true. It feels true. He feels _ everything, _ Aziraphale has climbed inside him and given him the keys to a higher understanding, and all of this is _ his, _angel included. Nobody can take any of it away.

“Oh, dear,” Aziraphale breathes, moving the hand at his cheek to twine in his hair. “I _ am _sorry for hitting you with my Inspiration — couldn’t sense you when I started — don’t worry, I’ll take it back-”

_“Don’t you dare, _it’s _mine _now,” Crawly snarls, and handily lifts them off the ground. With this much force against them, the wall should scrape along their back, maybe even rip a hole in their robe, but just in case, Crawly shoves his forearm over _his angel’s _sternum. He laughs, because it’s absurd; it’s never been like this. Crawly has always only ever had the power Aziraphale grants him. 

“It’s _ hurting _ you,” Aziraphale frets, despite everything, because of course they do. Because even now, technically, they’re the one with the power to change things; they only have to _ ruin _him first. All Crawly can do is take what’s there and twist it, corrupt it, so that’s what he does, with the same little tendril from before.

Angelic irises lose their grip on their human color as Aziraphale’s dangerously thin legs wind around Crawly’s hips. The fingers in his hair tighten, _ pull — _ this is a quirk of Aziraphale’s, Crawly realizes, they can’t help but take and take even when they’re giving, he wonders if they’re aware they’re _ doing _ it, it’s _ delectable, _and — he licks at Aziraphale’s ear. Tongues the shell of it, because he wants to. Bites at the lobe, because he likes biting. Everything is so much easier like this; he was wrong before, to try and use his own power on Aziraphale, of course it was destined to fail. 

_ This is temptation. _

It’s sharing, not pushing. Crawly understands, he sees, he _ Sees, _he is a prophet

(he’ll spread the Word of Aziraphale until the story is streaked with filth)

“Oh,” Aziraphale says — whispers — breathes — something in between, and he wants to lick the sound right out of the air and swallow it, a secret piece of _ his angel _in him forever. But before he can move, the air shifts, and with it, the current of Them Together. Aziraphale digs both hands into his long hair and spreads their delicate fingers, only to bunch the hair together in two handfuls and tug so sinfully downward. They purse their lips and blow, pieces of corrupt energy scattering, surrounding them, and they suck in again to feed it all directly into Crawly through the metaphysical tendril of connection. 

It’s fire and light and percussion, _ move, create, dance, sing, LIVE, _passion that Crawly knows does not exist in Heaven. His eyes grow heavy with it and slip closed as Aziraphale says softly into his ear, “Take what I give, and use it well in service to the Divine.”

Crawly’s head slips forward into the crook of Aziraphale’s neck. “Yes. _ Yes.” _

_ In service to you, _ he doesn’t say, because he is a vile, corrupt thing, and Aziraphale is Divine, and he will lie and lie and lie for more attention, inspiration, whatever it is they are sharing. This angel is _ his, _ and they will _ stay _ so by Hellish decree — so says Crawly, so shall it be, because _ he should get what he wants. _

He could stay like this forever, trapping Aziraphale against the wall and yet somehow being trapped and sheltered by his own design, and maybe Aziraphale would let him — cast off Heaven and Hell both, come to an arrangement, _ I’ll never do evil again if you’ll never let me go — _but all moments end, and this one is ended by the familiar slick, sick feel of another demon encroaching on his territory.

“Ha! Didn’t take you for the lust type, Crawly,” the demon says in an oily voice. Pinney, a lust demon. They have different superiors, but technically they have the same rank; it’s Crawly’s job to perform the temptations, but Pinney spreads lust wherever he goes. Humans are more likely to do the bad things they’ve thought about doing to each other when they’re overcome with lust and greed combined. More souls for Hell, less work for individual demons.

The high wears off. The Inspiration is gone. Crawly could _ kill _ Pinney, not just discorporate him, but actually, literally destroy the creature. He snarls into Aziraphale’s neck, sets them down, and turns, shielding them from view. Nobody else is allowed to even _ look _ at his angel, especially another denizen of Hell. “What do you _ want?” _

“Felt the lust. Came around to see if it needed a nudge. You don’t even bother with _ genitals, _ what are you doing with some mortal against — _ wait.” _ The demon sniffs. His large grey eyes widen with glee. “That’s not a mortal. You caught an _ angel? _Oh, this’ll be great. Give it to my department, won’t you? They’ll-”

“They’ll rip up the pretty thing so quickly,” he interrupts, grabbing Aziraphale’s arm. If push comes to shove, he’ll discorporate them himself; better to send them back to Heaven than let another demon get an eyeful; but first he’ll try something different. “Don’t you want a turn first? Before we turn it over to Hell? Come here, Pinney, wait till you get a look at it.”

He can’t tempt another demon the way he’d tempt a human, because they’re in the same line of work, but demons are as susceptible to naked offers as humans are. Angels, too, as Crawly’s coming to realize; it’s just a matter of knowing what they all want. Pinney is an easy read; he’s a lust demon, but he doesn’t care to do lustful acts. No, what he cares about is _ power. _Pinney lusts after prestige. He’s a ladder-climber in the way that Crawly never was and never will be. 

It’s not about getting his hands on an angel. It’s about getting his hands on an angel _ first. _

Aziraphale is stock-still behind him, and Crawly wonders if they trust him, or if they have their own plan. He hopes it’s the former, but he has to assume it’s the latter — and that whatever their plan is, does not include smiting Crawly along with Pinney. _ Surely _Aziraphale knows this is a ruse...right? Well, he can’t think about that now. He carefully positions himself so that no matter how Pinney cranes his neck, he can’t get a glimpse of Aziraphale without coming closer.

_ Closer, _ Crawly thinks, trying not to smile when Pinney does as directed. _ Come on, you know you want it. _

“It must be special, if it caught _ your _attention,” the other demon observes, and Crawly feels funny, like he wants to run away or blush or just kill Pinney, and then possibly himself, out of shame.

“Not _ that _ special,” he mutters, only for Aziraphale’s benefit, because at that moment, Pinney is close enough for Crawly to pounce. He does, pulling the lust demon’s arms back tightly and kicking his knee hard enough to cause a sick, wet sucking sound. The resultant shriek is intense and _ oh, _so satisfying. In the hierarchy of demons, if you’re not titled, the only thing that matters is who’s scared of whom.

Right now, Crawly has the power of an angel on his side. Theoretically, anyway. It’s a heavy feeling. _ God is with me, She walks by my side, _he thinks giddily, irreverently, and puts his plan into action. There is a specific, technical way to smite a demon. Most angels seem to prefer the more showy presentation, because it takes less mental energy when you don’t have to aim so precisely, but the actual smiting isn’t something as big as a lightning strike; it’s a strike, yes. One deadly, forceful strike, right through the essence of a demon. And right now, that’s what has to happen.

“Do it, Aziraphale,” he shouts, struggling to hold Pinney’s arms behind him now that the other demon knows they’re not on the same side in this one single fight. “You have to smite him. Hell can’t know…”

Know what, exactly? Crawly isn’t sure. They aren’t friends. They don’t usually work together. Crawly wants Pinney dealt with because he caught Crawly doing something bad that wasn’t in service to Hell, and Aziraphale is too blessed _ noble _ to just pretend Crawly made them do anything, so if the two of them just _ happen _ to stop him at the same time, it hardly counts as working together. But if Pinney tells the story accurately, and he has no reason to lie about it, Crawly’s bosses will find out that Crawly has more than a passing familiarity with his adversary. Aside from the...intimate moment, they know each other’s names, and Crawly defended them from a fellow demon. Aziraphale is _ Crawly’s _angel. Nobody can take them away, not Pinney, not Hell, not all the angels in Heaven. 

“I knew it,” Pinney spits. “Knew you had to be cheating. Nobody’s as good as you without inside help.”

Aziraphale nods decisively, strides up, reaches out with one long, bony finger, and…

There’s no demonic equivalent of this. A demon can erase memories, and Crawly has done it before — mostly to annoy humans; he takes a random patch and they fret about it and snap at each other and their disagreements are hilarious — but Aziraphale drags their celestial energy around, writes a sigil on Pinney’s forehead, and although Crawly can’t see what the alteration is, he can _ feel _it. 

Then, Aziraphale snaps Pinney’s neck, and the flesh body drops to the ground, abandoned.

“Eurgh,” the angel says, wrinkling their nose and running their hands over Crawly, as though reassuring themselves that he’s okay. “I really hate mind tricks. It’s like walking into someone’s house uninvited.”

“Not like you _ read _ his mind,” Crawly manages through the full-body jealousy creeping into him. This is so messed up. He can’t be jealous of Pinney. Aziraphale’s allowed to discorporate other demons, it’s part of the job description, and anyway Crawly shouldn’t _ want _ to be discorporated. He doesn’t want to. He just doesn’t want — he wants to — it’s _ their _ thing. It’s intimate, getting discorporated by someone, discorporating them...it would have been fine to smite the creature, but Crawly doesn’t want Aziraphale doing _ their thing _ with some filthy lust demon like Pinney, especially after what they just did up against the wall. Sharing. They _ shared, _ a little like angels, a little like demons, but mostly like proper humans, and it was _ glorious, _and then, “You wouldn’t have had to, only Pinney had to come in and insert himself like — like an unwanted third thing in a thing that’s only supposed to have two, and—” 

Yeah, the thought’s gone.

“Well, you’re right. But it still seems unethical.”

Crawly weighs the pros and cons of pointing out that Aziraphale’s mussed appearance wasn’t caused by anything _ ethical, _ either, and that occult things like them operate under different rules. He decides it isn’t worth the risk of Aziraphale storming off in embarrassment. Instead, he winds around his angel _ (his angel, his, nobody else’s) _ and murmurs, “You saved me again. Careful — I might think you’ve chosen to guard _ me.” _

“Incorrigible,” Aziraphale replies. Crawly can feel the movement of their head against his throat and presses down, seeking sensation. He can’t run out of air, but it feels nice to be tricked into thinking he might, and _ right, _ that’s a little messed up, but so is working with an angel to dispatch a fellow demon. Earth messes everything up. It makes you hurt in a way Hell _ can’t, _and this is the equivalent of pressing on a bruise to make it hurt less. 

(It’s not a hug if there’s pain involved.)

And anxiety rears its head, wraps its nasty little fingers in Crawly’s hair and yanks, because of course it does, but maybe there’s another way to cure the jealousy inside him. “They’ll know you discorporated him. They’ll — they’ll wonder how I escaped.”

“You’re clever enough, Crawly, you and I get away from each other all the time. Or perhaps you should discorporate me; I can’t bear this tiny form anymore, and if my discorporation comes at the tail end of dispatching a demon, they might issue me something better,” they suggest carefully.

Crawly scowls. That’s not where he wanted this conversation to go. “But you. I. You can’t just.”

“You’d _ rather _ I discorporated you? Come now, you can’t expect me to believe that.”

He doesn’t like it being put into words, but Aziraphale isn’t wrong. There’s a kind of rush that comes with dying. When he leans into it instead of clinging to life, he drifts right back down to Hell, and it’s not just peace, it’s _ release. _ He only ever feels it when Aziraphale is the one to discorporate him, and only when he has his angel’s attention first; it’s not fair that Pinney got all that intimacy and didn’t even appreciate or even understand what he’d been given. He buries his face in Aziraphale’s hair and _ wishes, _because he can’t say it aloud, but he can’t accept anything less.

“Oh, my dear,” they sigh, wrapping him tightly in an embrace that Crawly will later call violent, if anyone asks. (Nobody will. It’s the thought that counts.) “Having trouble getting back to Hell by yourself, are you? A compromise, then. We’ll go together. You get me, I’ll get you.”

If that’s what Aziraphale wants to think, that’s what Crawly will let them think. He nods and squeezes tightly before stepping back and materializing a short, sharp blade. Aziraphale makes a face, but pulls out a matching one and steps close, unafraid. 

“Don’t take too long to come back,” Crawly says.

“Don’t fret, foul fiend, I’ll be back to thwart you in no time,” they reply, soft and fond and all the things Crawly should hate. He doesn’t, though. He just _ wants. _“Oh, and before I forget…”

Aziraphale blows out, and it all flows _ right back into him, _ the inspiration, the love, the warmth, fight-dance-sing-worship — Crawly wants to soak in the light of _ his angel, _ but the knife is already coming for him, so he folds the seed of inspiration into himself, hiding it in folds of darkness, and meets Aziraphale’s blow with one of his own. Both blades meet their targets, and Crawly disenages, falls, _ flies, _ nestling into the stolen warmth, playing in the soulstuff that will _ never again _ belong to his angel, and when he touches down he’s still in such a state of bliss that nobody else can see him. The warmth envelopes him, surrounds him, integrates him, and it feels like — _ oh, _it feels like—

“Wings,” he says abruptly, speaking himself into the visible spectrum and startling the receptionist into inking all over her papers.

“What?”

_ “That’s _what there are two of. They come in pairs. Would be stupid to have three wings to a set. Couldn’t get around at all, could you? The third would make you go all...” He moves his hand in a sort of wavy motion. He’s very clever. “Shark. Dorsal fin. You know.”

She blinks at him carefully with her eyelids, and then does a thing with her nictating membranes. Her lips settle into a disapproving frown and she says, primly, “I’m going to have a word with your supervisor. I don’t care _ how _good you are at your job, you get weirder and weirder the more you discorporate.”

“Wasn’t my fault. Got hit with a blast of Divine Inspiration,” he confides, which is technically true. Also technically false. His brain’s still floaty from the death. It’s not like she has to worry; he’s usually very good at similes. This surely won’t happen again.

“That would explain the babbling. And the...animal imagery.” She inhales, holds it, and exhales, looking like nothing so much as a frustrated mother. “It wasn’t Uriel, was it?”

“Like I’d get caught by an Archangel. The usual Principality problem.”

“Aziraphale? _ Again? _Eurgh, that sigil’s so hard to get right for Dagon’s records.”

“We got each other this time,” he brags, pleased with himself. “I have very clever limbs. Clever tongue. Clever brain. I’m a menace. Even angels say so.”

“Can’t imagine what _ your _ sin was,” she replies snidely. “Picture of humility, you are. Standard forms, standard procedure, and for _ Satan’s _sake, Crawly, stop picking fights with the enemy. I am sick of your face.”

He grins at her, feeling good and nice and floaty, and he doesn’t even mind when she smacks his hand to get him to take the forms.


	6. Chapter 6

He seeks out the angelic aura. It isn’t as bright as the first two, but compared to the last one, it’s brilliant. Crawly is a little surprised that he got a new form before Aziraphale did, but Hell’s processes are getting faster, and Crawly has a little more leeway, since he’s one of Hell’s best field agents—

_ That’s not Aziraphale. _

The Archangel Gabriel strides up to him, grabs him by the front of his clothes, and lifts him up, using some combination of miraculous energy and Divinity to paralyze Crawly entirely. Aziraphale has never —  _ would  _ never. Aziraphale is a better class of angel. Is this what Gabriel has become? Beautiful, fiercely devoted Gabriel, lowered to delivering messages to a nobody like Crawly?

“What is Her Word,” he spits, not quite managing to make it come out as a question.

“Not Hers,” Gabriel counters, shaking Crawly once.  _ “Mine.  _ I recognized your grubby little fingerprints all over Aziraphale’s aura,  _ demon.  _ I take the safety of my angels very seriously, and I’m warning you: immortal or not, I will find a way to  _ permanently end you  _ if you keep trying to corrupt him.”

“Is that-” Crawly feels like he’s choking on the force of Gabriel’s focus, and it’s nothing like Aziraphale’s attention at all. It  _ hurts.  _ And where does Gabriel get off, calling Aziraphale  _ his  _ angel? Aziraphale belongs to Crawly, and sometimes to God, but no other. “Is that the official report?”

Gabriel laughs. It is not a kind laugh, or an amused one, but a dark thing that promises misfortune. Crawly remembers a lighter, happier Gabriel. Did war change him? Did it change Heaven? He’s having trouble focusing. “He says he accidentally hit you when he performed his Inspiration, and you refused to let go before it consumed you — as though you didn’t know the dangers! As though you didn’t know how traumatizing that is when  _ humans  _ manage to do it!”

“Do what-”

“Don’t play stupid.  _ He  _ has no reason to lie, but  _ you... _ I don’t for a second believe you just  _ happened  _ to be there. Aziraphale has friends in the highest of places, demon. Think  _ very carefully  _ about what  _ you  _ have before you try to hurt him again.”

And suddenly, it’s like Gabriel was never there. Crawly falls, shaking, to the ground, landing in an awkward slump he can’t get out of for several moments. It feels like the Earth is spinning too fast, and his head is resting on the dust  _ (for all your days, Serpent)  _ but everything is tilting anyway. He should feel giddy. This should feel wonderful. But he is only frightened. Gabriel is not and never will be Aziraphale. The flavor is all wrong, and the light…

...did Aziraphale really tell Heaven that Crawly is immortal?

_ You shelter me,  _ he thinks. Aloud, he says, “Oh, angel,  _ my  _ angel,” and wishes to be called a wretched creature in that affectionate, long-suffering tone. Gabriel trusts Aziraphale implicitly, and he  _ lied.  _ What a perfect gift.

Crawly  _ is _ a wretched creature, and he feels beautiful for it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah, I didn't like Gabriel either, but I keep thinking of the part in the miniseries when he says with absolute certainty, "I'm sure there's a perfectly innocent explanation." In the face of very damning evidence, he has faith in Aziraphale, which is probably why he seems to take Aziraphale's betrayal personally, and I'm kinda here for a pre-canon relationship between Aziraphale and Gabriel where Gabriel is one of the only angels who consistently likes and stands up for Aziraphale no matter how unorthodox he is. Gabriel and the other Archangels chose to be monsters at the end, but he probably wasn't always, and he's definitely a product of his environment. He emulated God, who's supposed to be perfect.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Miniseries places the Deluge at 3004 BC. James Ussher's chronology places the Deluge at 2348 BC. Considering that the lore of _Good Omens_ states that Ussher's calculations are off by a quarter of an hour, I'm going with 2348. At any time the Valley would have to be miraculously contained anyway, to avoid a major climate event and other collateral damage.

_ A bit tetchy,  _ Crawly thinks. Really? The Almighty’s decided to wipe out an entire civilization along with the Nephilim, and Aziraphale’s characterization of Her is  _ a bit tetchy?  _ He supposes it’s better than another fight. Crawly can’t deny that this is partly his responsibility, and the angel’s generously  _ not  _ mentioned that.

On a mountain so far away that they could only reach it by flying, Crawly can’t make out the ankle- or knee-deep water in the Valley that he knows is there. If he hadn’t arrived so late, he might have tried to do something,  _ anything —  _ get some of the kids out at least, just to send them off with stories about how evil the Almighty is, of course — but the only thing he could do was get out before the rain drowned him, too.

“It’s evil,” he insists quietly, looking at Aziraphale from behind. He doesn’t think he could bear to look at that passive face. There isn’t any starlight, not here. There will be when the clouds pass, but it hurts to see that this night, his angel still belongs to God, at least for now. “My side doesn’t kill unless we have to. This is wholesale  _ slaughter.” _

“It’s God’s answer to my failure,” the angel counters, just as quiet, just as sad. “After all, I should have kept an eye on them, guided them away from wickedness, even after I couldn’t find anybody else who could handle the solution. We couldn’t reconfigure the formula, either. It’s my fault She has to intervene this day.”

It would be better, Crawly thinks, if Aziraphale just struck him down with lightning again. His angel is shouldering the blame for someone else’s creations and Crawly’s mischief and pure human error. It isn’t fair. God isn’t just. God has  _ never  _ been just. She’s only right because She says She is, and She’s God so whatever She says must be true, and it’s a stupid paradox that hurts Crawly’s brain just as much as it hurts everything else in the universe, including his angel. He should be marked this night, painted with starlight. He should be Crawly’s, forever and ever, because God does not deserve him.

Aziraphale is back in his first body, the softest one from Eden with the hands and calves and belly and all the places Crawly wished to touch and never got to before the idiot went and discorporated himself. He wants to touch now, so he does, wiggles his way up behind the angel — stiff, unrelenting Aziraphale, staring out at the drowning masses that neither of them can see, but Aziraphale can surely  _ feel  _ — and winds himself around the soft body. It’s as nice as he thought it would be, malleable, the kind of form he can knead and bite into if he wants. And he does want. In the century or so since they last saw each other, he’s  _ wanted. _

Demons want certain things. If he turns his head sideways, this is a thing he should want. It’s okay to want this because Aziraphale is forbidden, right? God’s perfect little soldier that Crawly has been stealing piece by blessed piece. 

“Still a clingy serpent, I see. It’s kind of you to offer me comfort,” says Aziraphale, adorably missing the point, “but you had better go. I have a rather large blessing to perform, and if you’re in the way, it will hurt you far more than it did last time.”

“This is  _ not  _ a  _ kindness,”  _ Crawly retorts, before nipping sharply at the juncture of Aziraphale’s neck and shoulder. The angel jerks in Crawly’s grip. “And I’m not going anywhere. Last time I saw you I thought I’d die of rapture. Do you think I’d let you get away from me now,  _ angel?” _

“But I...I got a commendation,” he denies, confused. “For finding another way to harm a demon.”

Crawly distinctly remembers Gabriel’s warning — he’s decided to discard it; if he’d wanted to stay within Heaven’s purview, he’d not have thrown in his lot with Lucifer and the other rebels — and wonders which one of them is lying. The Gabriel he remembers wouldn’t lie. But the Gabriel he remembers wouldn’t resort to a violent shakedown of someone so far beneath him it’s  _ comical,  _ either. Then again, it’s equally likely that Aziraphale is lying, though for what purpose, Crawly can’t fathom…

He wishes his angel were easier to read, but he’s so  _ stiff.  _ Stilted. Maybe he’s been lying this whole time. 

(No. They  _ shared.  _ That wasn’t a lie, it couldn’t have been. Crawly would have known, he would have felt it. Aziraphale wouldn’t do that anyway. He’s good. He has to be good, because Crawly’s been stealing him, and a corrupted angel would fall.)

Delicately, Crawly licks the curve of Aziraphale’s ear, then suggests, “Sometimes pleasure looks like pain. From the outside. And nobody can tell the difference.”

“Oh! You lied to someone, didn’t you? Wicked creature. Leave, so I can perform my blessing.”

Crawly’s chest burns in delight. He likes that one almost as much as foul fiend, truly. “I’m not going anywhere unless you physically force me. If it hurts, it hurts.”

He’s expecting Aziraphale to fret, but he doesn’t. He simply sighs, pulls at the air, and does something... _ something... _ this isn’t the kind of blessing Crawly’s witnessed before, and it’s not an Inspiration. It’s Else. It’s Otherworldly. He’s not even certain he can call it Divine; it feels entirely like Aziraphale, inside and out, sharing no qualities with Gabriel or God or any other angel Crawly’s had the misfortune to meet. It’s liquid heat racing through him, it’s a pale blue wave of pure love, it’s agony and ecstasy (a concept which will  _ radiate  _ through time and space, unbidden). 

Crawly is pulled under, and he goes willingly, clutching at Aziraphale not as a lifeline — just as a tether. He floats in the ether, on soothing Hellfire, under unblessed, angry rain that tastes of God and Judgment. If he reaches out, he can touch his stars beyond the clouds. He can’t reach out, but he can reach in, and he wants to share again, so he does, because how could he not? 

A twist, a jerk. He has grown around his stolen seed, and it now belongs to him; it is a part of him, and it feels like Aziraphale, so he is as much a part of his angel as anything else. He hooks onto his new piece on one end and shoves the other at Aziraphale, not the tenderest offering but the only way he knows how to offer anything. Crawly takes what he wants. He doesn’t ask for things. He doesn’t even know how. His head lolls forward and he buries his face in Aziraphale’s neck, seeking heat, seeking sensation. He smells of rain and sharp magic. His hands rub the delightful folds of his angel’s belly. And the shy, answering hook sends them both spinning.

They fall backward onto something soft, hastily-miracled, not soft enough to keep the fall from hurting but thick enough to keep them from eating dust. Aziraphale shelters him even from God and Her petty curses. Aziraphale’s weight crushes Crawly, but it feels perfect for the pain; he is grounded, he is punished, he is sheltering Aziraphale right back. He sips the sound tumbling from his angel’s mouth, the insensate mewling turning to words, pleas,  _ please, forgive me,  _ and Crawly moves from a serpentine embrace to a fierce, protective squeeze.

He can’t speak, but he feeds his angel anger, fire, desperate need. Of all the beings in all the dimensions in this infinite universe, Aziraphale needs forgiveness the least, and Crawly knows this because  _ he _ is unforgivable. He is a wicked, vile thing, and like recognizes like. Aziraphale is not like. 

Crawly moves them so they’re front to front, the angel on his back where the stars will hit him perfectly as soon as they’re out. Aziraphale’s hands run over Crawly’s hips, then up his spine, then come to rest in his hair, while the rest of him heaves. It’s heavy and wretched and sad and beautiful and it  _ hurts,  _ like Aziraphale wants to cry but forgot to turn on his tear ducts. Crawly takes that too, sucks it up and gulps it down and twists it into a glorious ache in his own chest, because he is made of torment and he likes feeling it from others. It feels good to steal that away. 

_ God does not deserve you,  _ he thinks, coming back to himself. As an afterthought, he directs a prayer directly at Her.  _ Look what you’ve done to your most perfect angel, you vile wretch. _

He wishes She still listened, but the Fallen were entirely cut off. She probably  _ can’t  _ hear his prayer. But here, now,  _ he  _ is shelter, and She is filth in comparison. He’s never hated Her more.

He rolls off of his angel and gives him space to come down. They’re lying on a blanket, obviously miracled into existence by — well, it actually might have been Crawly, he’s not entirely sure who did it, but he thinks it was Aziraphale. His shoulder hurts from where the angel fell on him and his whole body feels as though it might float away, a little too big in the head and a little too small everywhere else. But the clouds are moving, and soon, there will be starlight. Soon, Aziraphale will be  _ Crawly’s  _ angel, and  _ only  _ Crawly’s angel. Fuck God and all Her sadistic plans.

“What kind of blessing,” he ventures, after a moment of silence, “requires  _ that much power?” _

“I…”

Ah. This is one of those  _ maybe-I-shouldn’t-have-done-that  _ things, isn’t it? Like the sword. “I won’t tell, you know that.”

“Put them all to sleep,” Aziraphale mumbles. 

Crawly’s eyes go very, very wide. “All of them?”

“I couldn’t let them die in fear! Drowning hurts, and there were — it’s as you said, there were  _ children,  _ and nobody said anything about torture, they just weren’t allowed to live. So I made sure they died peacefully. By this time tomorrow the whole Valley will be flooded, and they would all have been dead in a few hours anyway, but at least now…”

“But... _ every single one?  _ That’s so many humans!”

Aziraphale hums, and he sounds more stable when he replies, “You helped, you know. I thought it would take every drop of my power, but you fed me. Crawly, I don’t know how you did it, but you helped me bless the Valley. You helped me save-”

“I didn’t,” he says darkly, “and even if I  _ did,  _ it would only be because I don’t agree with the stupid  _ Not-At-All-Great Plan,  _ not because I care about humans.”

“Of course,” says his angel gently, and that seems to be the end of it.

The silence is heavy and harsh. Crawly usually enjoys silence, because the alternative is — generally — the wailing and gnashing of teeth in Hell, or more assignments that he doesn’t want to do, but he wants to talk to the angel more, because he just does. Because Aziraphale is his, and that means he needs to make sure everything is fine. Only, you see, because he can’t have a defective angel. He doesn’t  _ care,  _ especially not now that he’s gotten what he wanted.

“I heard angels can get hurt during inspirations,” he says, looking at his hand in the emergent moonlight and pretending it isn’t important to him. It isn’t, really. This is purely academic, just something to gauge the angel’s state of mind.

“Where did you hear that?”

He shrugs awkwardly and lies, “Heard some demons talking about it. Wondered how close we came to an accident.”

“Don’t fret. It’s only dangerous if a  _ human _ manages to overpower the angel.” Aziraphale sighs, but Crawly thinks it’s a good sigh, maybe because he stole the bad feelings away during their shared blessing. “It doesn’t happen often, for obvious reasons, and it’s always accidental. They just...lose focus, or underestimate the human’s will. If it’s done wrong, there’s a moment when they mix; you felt it just now, but it’s not the same, because demons are angel stock, aren’t you? In an inspiration gone wrong, the human gains a bit of Divine power for a while, the angel becomes a bit more human, and it takes a little while for that angel to purge the — well, everyone calls it a taint, but I’m disinclined to agree with the terminology. That’s why so many of them are delegated to me: I’m familiar enough with humans that it isn’t a risk.”

Curious. He hadn’t thought humans would pose any sort of threat to angels at all. “What happens if they just keep mixing? Does the human become an angel?”

“Heavens, Crawly, no. The human would  _ die,  _ and I suppose the angel might be lost, if they were sufficiently...switched. It’s never happened. No angel would be stupid enough to, to — to — you can’t put an  _ angel  _ in a  _ human’s body  _ and — that’s  _ obscene-” _

“Keep your feathers on, Aziraphale, for Satan’s sake,” Crawly tries to soothe, but he’s suddenly equal parts confused and angry. He hates how mercurial he can be, but — they send  _ his angel  _ to take those kinds of risks?  _ Regularly?  _ They aren’t allowed to do that! 

...But Gabriel’s words finally make sense. If Crawly had kept taking and Aziraphale hadn’t tried to twist it back, they could have been switched. Both of them could have discorporated _wrong _and been stuck with powers they couldn’t control, or...something like that, it’s still a bit fuzzy. That’s not to say Crawly’s done being Inspired. Far, _far _from it. He just has to be more careful — and keep his angel from discorporating until his _demonic taint _is sufficiently purged. (Truth be told, Crawly wants it to never, ever leave. He wants Aziraphale to carry his mark forever. But he likes existing too much to test Gabriel; unlike God, Gabriel as an Overseer clearly takes a more _active _role in the protection of the Host.)

Aziraphale sighs and adjusts his position. Crawly scoots as close as he dares, almost touching but not quite there yet. It’s like the beginning again: they’re together, just the two of them, watching the stars while the humans suffer God’s wrath, and Crawly remembers with glee that  _ Aziraphale lied  _ to protect someone who didn’t deserve it. 

“Sometimes I want to go home,” Aziraphale admits quietly, not to Crawly, but to the night sky.

He scowls. “Why  _ don’t  _ you, then? Why come back?”

“Oh, I suppose it’s because home doesn’t exist anymore. I want the old Heaven back, before the schism, when death and violence were just joke concepts and nobody was afraid to commune with one another. Now everyone is so distant, because what if you get close to someone and they fall?” Aziraphale laughs. He sounds as awkward and insincere as he used to. “No, my place is here. I’m just, I don’t know, a bit nostalgic.”

“Maudlin, more like. You know it wasn’t personal, right?” Crawly turns over on his side and props himself up on one elbow and forearm, trying to draw his angel’s attention. This is important, because...well,  _ because.  _ Aziraphale needs to know, or else he won’t ever  _ really  _ be Crawly’s angel in his own head. Something like that. It’s a big Because. Important. Too important to be properly structured. “Nobody knew it was possible to fall. It didn’t exist until it happened. I didn’t even...agree with all of it. Just  _ enough  _ of it that I knew what side I was on. None of us would take it back, you know. We weren’t wrong. We were just punished for being on the losing side.”

“You were always going to lose. You don’t  _ argue  _ with  _ God,”  _ Aziraphale points out, sounding unimpressed.

Genuinely curious about the answer, he asks, “Why not?”

“Because She made everything! How-”

“She didn’t! We helped!”

“She made  _ us.  _ She created us from thought and will. She used Her own essence to give us form and sentience; She lives in  _ every single one of us,  _ and what we do, we do in Her name. How could you or anybody else know better than God about  _ the things She thought up?  _ I for one am grateful — I am  _ honored —  _ to be allowed to exist. Of all the possible configurations, She chose to make me. It’s not that I don’t have my doubts about the mechanics, Crawly, we all do, because we can’t possibly understand the whole picture. But I trust my own creator. She did not create the universe out of spite, and She did not create us by accident. That’s the real difference between you and me. Your questions came from a place of arrogance. Mine come from a place of love.  _ Everything I do  _ is out of love for Her.”

Crawly curls his lip, angry at the whole thing. It’s stupid. His angel is so  _ stupid,  _ and  _ beautiful,  _ and he wants to take that light and snuff it out because it  _ hurts.  _ Even as an angel, Crawly never had faith like that. He did what he was told because he had to, because he never had a choice. God never talked to the lowly workers, did She? He loved Her desperately —  _ still does,  _ he can’t  _ help  _ it, that’s why it’s so easy to  _ hate  _ Her _ —  _ and in return, She barely thought of him. Aziraphale never had to suffer that. He never had to look on with longing while the higher-ups got attention and special assignments. And look at how miserable She just made Aziraphale! He’s only not suffering because Crawly stole the sadness before it overwhelmed them both! 

_ She just killed a whole Valley full of Her chosen favorites because some of Her angels acted out and the humans aren’t perfect,  _ and Aziraphale blames himself, the idiot!

He braces his other hand on the ground, leans forward, and asks slyly, “Even telling Gabriel I’m immortal? That’s lying,  _ angel.  _ Or what about when you kissed me, hmm? How d’you justify  _ that  _ one?”

“I didn’t say you were immortal, I said you couldn’t die,” Aziraphale says shortly, “which is both true, and in service to the humans, Her favored creations. Better  _ you  _ here than one of your unsavory counterparts. As for the other...I don’t. It isn’t justifiable. I can only ask forgiveness. Hers,  _ and  _ yours.”

“I  _ really  _ hate you,” Crawly groans, dropping his whole upper body to the ground. “You don’t have any right to call  _ me  _ arrogant, you...sanctimonious — you — eurgh.”

“Leave, then, if you dislike me so.”

_ “You  _ leave.”

“It’s my spot, and my blanket. I’ll stay here as long as I like.”

Crawly keeps his eyes closed, but moves his hand over to wrap it around Aziraphale’s wrist. “I said I hate you. I didn’t say I wanted to go anywhere. It’s not like there’s anywhere I  _ could  _ go. Back to the water? Or into the wilderness alone in the middle of the night?”

His angel turns over, reaches out, and traces Crawly’s face with a finger, sighing. “I  _ am  _ glad you’ll stay. I’d hoped to have your company. I...I do have faith in Her plan, but  _ feeling  _ all those people die...can I ask a favor?”

“You can  _ ask.  _ Probably won’t say yes,” he replies, just to be contrary.

“Look at me. All night, just keep looking. Remember that? I think I finally understand why you asked for it.”

Crawly doubts it. “And why is that?”

Sounding very small, Aziraphale answers, “I don’t want to be alone.”

It’s not the same. Crawly opens his eyes and looks anyway. The stars drip down on them like they should have from the beginning, and it’s not like he’s  _ forgotten,  _ but their fight seems unimportant now. God can’t touch his angel when the stars are out — and, he thinks smugly, that means She can’t hurt him, either. Even as a demon he still knows better than God how to treat angels  _ and  _ humans. So he’ll look and look until Aziraphale forgets Her, right up until the sun rises.

He winds his limbs around his angel and watches the anxiety drop away.


	8. Chapter 8

When Crawly helped establish the oil factory in Sodom, it was just a bit of fun. He quickly grew bored of their hubris (and decided not to look too closely at the hypocrisy), and he largely forgot about them, because since then he’s had other projects and more interesting things to think about. But he’s back in Sodom because so is Aziraphale, this time with a new angel called Sandalphon — an ascended human, Crawly has  _ no idea  _ how that worked, and he has no interest in finding out — and Crawly would like to clean up his own mess before Aziraphale has to.

He’d really rather not have another disaster like the Valley. It’s been less than half a century since he last saw Aziraphale, since their shared blessing, and he’d like their next meeting to be a nice one for a change.

It’s easy enough to whisper in certain ears that there are two important men in town who follow the old ways, who expect hospitality and who are too influential to deny. They are looking for righteous men, he explains, to collaborate on a short project, and the more they find, the more likely it is that Sodom will be left in peace. 

They are wealthy, he cautions. They are well-connected. If they are denied, there will be devastating repercussions. And Crawly is pleased by his work; surely,  _ surely,  _ the two angels will move on from Sodom having found what they were looking for, and everybody can forget this city and its sister, Gomorrah. In a century or so, maybe three, they will have torn themselves apart with greed anyway, so there’s no need to pay them too much mind!

Crawly’s fatal mistake is his failure to take into account that  _ he is a demon,  _ and he did not bother to turn off the temptation. He hears about it afterward — the mob, the rage, Sandalphon’s vicious smiting, the destruction of the surrounding cities — and he can’t help but follow the seed to its source. Aziraphale is on Earth, and if he’s been hurt…

He is  _ Crawly’s  _ angel. He isn’t allowed to  _ get hurt.  _ That’s for everybody else.

Aziraphale is skulking around a cave, bitter and frustrated. Crawly can feel humans inside, but he doesn’t care; he only has eyes for his angel, who looks fierce in the moonlight. Aziraphale’s eyes zero in on him as soon as he shows himself and the angel strides up to him, grabs him by the front of his clothing, and practically  _ growls,  _ “They said  _ you  _ sent them.”

He didn’t know Aziraphale’s voice could do that. He’s always so soft and passive. The shift sets his whole body to tingling, from his non-functional heart to his extremities. “I didn’t! I only — I didn’t.”

“Thank God,” Aziraphale murmurs, settling Crawly down, his eyes so full of hope, and Crawly is filled with  _ rage. _

Thank  _ God?  _ She has nothing to do with Crawly’s decisions. She’s the one who made him burn down an entire region of cities, not Crawly.  _ He _ is a demon, and Aziraphale should stop having  _ faith  _ in him, the stupid — whatever it is that’s obviously stupid. He spits, “You idiot, you  _ believed  _ me? Ha! Of  _ course  _ I set them on you. Told them you were there to shut down the factory. Got them all riled up, too. You’re so gullible.”

“Despicable creature,” Aziraphale returns, shoving Crawly away hard enough to make him fall. It feels  _ good.  _ He likes it when they fight, as much as he likes it when they share. He likes it when his angel calls him things like despicable and wicked, and glee bubbles up with an intensity he wasn’t expecting when he scrambles to his feet. 

“Bet it felt so good to get in some  _ righteous smiting,”  _ he taunts, knowing that Aziraphale hates that part of the job. His angel knows he knows, even though they’ve never discussed it. Aziraphale doesn’t bother with any miracles, only comes for Crawly with his physical form; he’s well and truly angry, and Crawly is  _ thrilled. _

They don’t dance. There is nothing graceful about the way Aziraphale strikes at Crawly, who mostly manages to get out of the way by falling head over heels at odd angles. There is nothing pretty about the way Aziraphale’s solid kick to Crawly’s leg pops his hip out of place, or the pained  _ shriek  _ that elicits as he goes down on his face. It hurts when Aziraphale yanks his arms back, dislocating one of his shoulders. It hurts when Aziraphale’s forearm goes into his upper back, rubbing Crawly’s face in the dirt. 

Dirt in his eyes, dirt in his mouth, and he might be screaming, or the world might be screaming for him. He doesn’t feel bad anymore, he feels absolved. He doesn’t feel angry anymore, he feels  _ free.  _ All that’s left is to die, and this moment will be perfect. Aziraphale will surely give him that. He  _ must.  _ After all, as far as he knows, Crawly set an angry mob on two angels — probably to try something violent, or to kill them, or whatever — he’s clever and evil, and Aziraphale knows it. Technically it’s not even a lie, if it was an unintended consequence of trying to do the right thing for once.

“Dust, for all your days,” Aziraphale snarls into his ear, digging his fingers in so deep it would do permanent damage, if Crawly intended to keep this form. The old curse digs into him and transforms in his angel’s voice into something splendid. “It doesn’t matter how fast or how hard you squirm, you vile thing, it’s still the only thing you  _ can  _ do.”

Oh, this is the cruelest thing Aziraphale’s ever said, doubly so because of the truth in it, and it’s absolute ecstasy. If Aziraphale would hurry up and kill him now the high of it would keep him in a state of bliss until they issued him a new body. But the angel is so  _ slow.  _ Crawly moans in the way the humans do — maybe if he disgusts Aziraphale enough they can get to the dying bit — but all he gets in return is a firmer grip on his hair and a tug back that forces his back to arch. At  _ this,  _ Crawly makes an involuntary noise, some high-pitched whine that only a fool would mistake for pain.

“Please,” he says helplessly. He’s not sure what he’s asking for. He doesn’t know what he wants or needs except  _ discorporation,  _ and he can’t just ask for that, can he? He has Aziraphale’s undivided attention again. That’s what he’s after, too. His eyes leak fluids and he feels like his whole  _ being  _ is pressed outward as he says again, “Please. Angel, Aziraphale,  _ please, please-” _

“Oh,” the angel says, immediately letting go. No — no, he can’t lose this! He struggles to move, but his hip and shoulder are dislocated, and he’s  _ wrecked,  _ and if Aziraphale leaves he’ll surely cease to exist entirely, his very  _ essence _ will wither and die. Aziraphale kneels beside him and stills him with a touch. “Don’t move, Crawly.”

Crawly doesn’t. 

“This is going to hurt, but not as much as it did before,” warns the angel, and then  _ let there be pain.  _ There is no stopping it, the shaky pop of joints put back into place, the crack of bones unbreaking. To a human, it would hardly feel like anything, but Crawly is a demon, and the constant stream of Divinity is a lash in him. He doesn’t know if he’s screaming or if it’s trapped inside his throat, but he does know that his limbs are weighted down with a miracle so he’ll stop thrashing. It hurts, it hurts, it  _ hurts it hurts it hurts. _

It will take, he thinks, quivering, trying and failing to determine whether a second or a year has passed, several days before he can manage to go anywhere, probably. But his body is in better shape than it was when he picked this fight.

“You  _ bastard,”  _ he says. He doesn’t sob it, because demons don’t cry. It’s not in their design. It just can’t be. 

“You’re not thinking straight,” Aziraphale says, sounding worried. Crawly doesn’t have the energy to turn his head and look at the angel’s face to check. He doesn’t even have the energy to be offended. The voice softens to something almost fond, or maybe Crawly just wishes it were. “I think you lie so much you don’t even know the truth, but  _ I saw it  _ in your head just now, when you gave it to me. You need to rest, you wicked thing.”

Oh,  _ no,  _ following the seed had consequences, he accidentally shared the truth, and Aziraphale stripped him too bare. His voice cracks when he asks, “And risk someone walking over and slitting my throat after all the work you did?”

“No one will harm you while I am here.”

Crawly knows Truth when he hears it. With his body so raw from the miracles, the Truth resonates inside the hollows of him, and he’s not sure whether he wants to hide from it or hoard it. He can do neither, in any case. Hoping to drive away the source of his shame, he slurs, “You’d do better guarding me if you held me. Like before. In the desert. But since you can’t do that, you should just-”

“Of course I’ll hold you, Crawly. It’s nighttime,” says Aziraphale. Crawly feels the pressure of an angelic miracle and suddenly, he’s covered with a blanket, above and below, wrapped up in a way that helps the pain. The angel drops down next to him and Crawly finally gets a look at his face.

He looks unhappy. Crawly should be happy about that, but he has a funny writhing in his stomach that he’s never felt before. It’s a bit like the moments before he fell, but this is in some ways far more upsetting, because he can’t escape it. Even if he closes his eyes, Aziraphale will still be able to look at him. When he fell, the entire Host stood and watched, but the only people Crawly cared about were falling with him. This is the personal attention he’s always wanted, but he’s entirely vulnerable, unable to manipulate his angel’s perception any more than he can manipulate his own limbs.

Fucking — for  _ Satan’s sake, _ he cares what Aziraphale thinks.

As though he can still read Crawly’s mind, even though he’s not projecting anymore, Aziraphale cuddles close, arms wrapped so that it’s too hard to look at Crawly directly, and says, “Sometimes it’s easiest not to think about the things you can’t change. We aren’t like them.”

Crawly doesn’t ask which  _ them  _ Aziraphale means: angels, demons, or humans. He doesn’t think he wants to know where his angel’s mind has gone, especially on such dangerous ground. He doesn’t want Aziraphale to fall. He never did. He wouldn’t be  _ Aziraphale  _ if he weren’t an angel, and they wouldn’t have...whatever they have.

He closes his eyes and pretends, for a little while, that they’re not lying side by side because Aziraphale pities him, but because he cares.

(He’ll hate himself in the morning. But that’s for later.)

“I’m nothing anyway,” he says, but what he means is  _ I’m sorry.  _

“You are  _ not  _ nothing,” Aziraphale says sternly. It feels like a blessing and it hurts like a knife. Softer, “I know what you are. You cannot help being a demon. You can squirm at my feet all you like, but you gave yourself to me when you chose to be better than the rest of your kin.  _ You are mine  _ to shelter and protect.” Through the heat and awkward, beautiful, terrible feeling that Crawly can’t name, he thinks he feels soft lips against his forehead. “I did not accept  _ nothing,  _ and I won’t let you take the easy way out.”

He wants to protest that he’s not  _ better,  _ he’s a perfectly evil demon, but if Aziraphale says anything else, he might discorporate from embarrassment, which you can’t put on paperwork. So he pretends he didn’t hear it, and because his angel is kind and good, he allows it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's no agreement for when Sodom and its surroundings were destroyed, largely because there's no real evidence that Sodom existed _at all._ I'm placing its destruction at 2300 BC based on something I read once that had something to do with olive oil and geography.


	9. Chapter 9

Crowley has a little toy soldier sewn into her hem. It was clumsily made from wood by a cute little boy just two years after a tedious journey from Egypt to Nazareth, and there’s blood on the head from a slip of chubby fingers. When they met again in the desert, he didn’t remember making it for her — but she still values it, the first material object she’s ever been attached to. She understands death better now, and it’s been good for her to spend a couple thousand years running from her angel, because she understands herself better, too.

That’s not to say he’s stopped protecting her. She’s felt herself nudged away from places just days before other angels have appeared, and demons who take issue with her methods have miraculously found themselves discorporated. But she gets to be the one to decide when they see each other, and until now, she hasn’t been ready yet, not after that night when he found out her dreadful secret.

(She  _ does  _ like the pain. She  _ does  _ like the conflict, the humiliation, the great frightening thing that is being discorporated. It just has to be right. The right circumstances, the right person, the right reason. It’s only the way demons have fun with their toys, and maybe it’s usually the other way around, but this isn’t  _ entirely  _ unheard of.)

Apparently, Aziraphale eats now. Crowley doesn’t eat, but she likes drinking, which Aziraphale  _ also  _ does, and with relish. It’s practically obscene, the way he’s breaking his bread, sighing with each tiny bite. It sounds like human sex. She’s a demon, so she finds it fascinating in an academic sort of way, but she wants him to pay attention to her.

“The bread’s not even good,” she mutters. Or maybe sulks.

Aziraphale is staying in a set of rooms for one more night, and the food is plain, Crowley can tell by looking. Can’t they just skip dinner? She wants to catch up. She wants to wind around him again and smell him and make sure he’s still the same angel. She’s not the same demon, at least not exactly, so if he’s not the same angel  _ she needs to know.  _ He eats! What else has changed?

What if he doesn’t want her anymore?

“I haven’t eaten in days,” he tells her, “and I’ve grown used to it. Why don’t you have some? Or at least drink a little ale.”

“Not interested. I didn’t come and find you to share a  _ meal.” _

He pauses, looks up, and meets her eyes. She feels naked, but it’s different. She’s older now. She knows more now. Softly, he asks, “Why  _ did  _ you come and find me, Crowley?”

Her new name sounds solid and right coming out of his mouth, especially in that tone of voice. He’s talking to her like she’s important — which she obviously  _ is,  _ but she’d worried he might have forgotten. Her answering shrug isn’t genuine, but she’s a demon; she’s allowed to lie. She’s  _ supposed  _ to lie, especially to her perfect toy soldier. “It’s been a few years. Thought you might be missing me. And I wanted to show off my new form. ‘S pretty, isn’t it?”

“Very,” he agrees, as though there’s actually something different aside from the miniscule widening of her hips. “It suits you. I’m glad  _ you  _ like it.”

This is  _ so tedious.  _ She wants to get him alone and...something. She might be older and wiser, but she’s still not certain of all her desires yet. Sometimes she isn’t even sure of the difference between hurt and joy, let alone all the many things she could experience in Aziraphale’s company. She huffs, taps her fingers on the table, and says, “I don’t want to be here. I want to be somewhere private where we can talk. I-” (She can say this, because it might be true, but it’s a weapon all the same.) “I  _ missed you.” _

“I suppose I can eat later.” He nods politely at her. “Follow me, then. Nobody will notice us.”

He gathers his bread from the table, but after standing up, he rests a hand softly against her upper back, guiding her through the somewhat crowded area without having to shuffle their positions. She feels him through her whole body, radiating from that point of contact. It’s warm and soothing, and she can’t wait until she can sit next to him — or maybe  _ on  _ him — and drape herself over him like the serpent she is. He has such lovely shoulders, she remembers. Strong enough to break her, soft enough to bite. She’s glad he still has this body. She hasn’t gotten to knead it nearly as much as she wanted to.

He closes the door behind them and she surveys the room with distaste. It’s sparsely furnished, filled with writing materials; it doesn’t even have a  _ bed.  _ “Where do you sleep?”

“I don’t,” he says, raising an eyebrow. That’s a new expression...maybe. She can’t remember. It’s been a long time. “I’ve never slept.”

“Thought you might, now that you eat.”

“Ah. No, I’ve found that eating calms me, but trying to sleep only makes me think about what could go wrong, so I don’t bother. Feel free to sit in one of the chairs. Do  _ you  _ sleep?”

She stays standing until he sits, at which point she follows and drapes herself over his lap, face-up so she can look at him. He rolls his eyes when she clasps her hands at the base of his hairline, but that’s all right, because he moves his hand to stroke her hair too, and he doesn’t seem to realize he’s doing it. Ha! — he  _ has  _ missed her. She doesn’t answer his question, but instead says, “It was hard to track down where you were staying. You stayed out there for days and days. Wasn’t sure my snooping would pay off after all.”

“It was my duty to watch over his crucifixion, and then his tomb,” he acknowledges, “and protect it. The rest, the Archangels handled. I wasn’t allowed to meet him. It wasn’t my place, I suppose.”

Bitterness. She understands that, but she’s surprised to find it in him. He  _ has  _ changed, at least a little. “That’s not fair.”

“Her Word is Law.”

“Her Law isn’t fair.”

He shakes his head. “You know I can’t agree with you, Crowley, but I appreciate the kind-”

“I’m not kind, I’m  _ tempting  _ you,” she says desperately. Because she is not kind. That is one thing that must stay true. Demons, fundamentally, cannot be kind. She is a demon. Therefore, any act of kindness is an act of manipulation, and she can’t have the angel thinking otherwise, being  _ nice  _ to her,  _ being stupid  _ about it.

“Of course. My mistake.” He pauses, as though weighing his words, and then tells her casually, “For a moment I thought you were trying to inspire me.”

“Demons don’t  _ inspire,”  _ she scoffs, although she’s pleased to hear it. He belongs to her, maybe in his own heart as well as hers. “I tempt. That’s my job. I like doing it.”

“Oh, but a temptation is merely an inspiration toward acts of darkness.” He pulls her up, so she’s sitting sort of properly; her legs are still thrown over the side of the chair, but her head is higher than his now, so the clasp of her hands is looser, almost a gentle hug. He smiles up at her, sweet, genuine, and she wants to wipe it off his face. She doesn’t trust it. Angels don’t look at demons that way. They don’t even look at each  _ other  _ that way. “I suppose another way to put it is that an inspiration is a temptation to do good.”

He’s older, too. Less volatile, just like she is. Time apart has been good for them, even if just twenty minutes with him is already making her antsy. That will probably always be the case, because they are enemies. Angels and demons aren’t supposed to embrace like this. He should be attacking her. She should be attacking him. She shouldn’t be thinking of his lips, or the stolen seed which is entirely hers now.

If the destruction of Sodom happened today, she thinks, he wouldn’t attack her. She’s not sure that’s a good thing. Just because she’s better at existing now doesn’t mean she’s done  _ playing.  _ Maybe he can still be tipped over the edge; she’ll just have to figure out how. It’s an exciting thought that she will revisit, if she feels like it.

He reaches up to loosen her hands and bring them around between them, massaging the backs of them with his thumbs. It’s funny that the last time he touched her limbs, he broke them, and now he’s being so gentle. God’s perfect little soldier, except when he forgets. “Tell me that you’ve been all right, Crowley.”

That’s not what she’d expect to hear from him, but she can semi-honestly answer, “I have. Spent some time in Egypt. Tempted God — or at least part of Her. Didn’t work, but it was never going to. Didn’t think about you at all, though. I was far too busy. And you? Tell me you were  _ all right.” _

“The work has kept me busy as well. I’ve hardly had a moment to think,” he replies, “so yes, I’ve been as all right as you. Angels aren’t built to be anything else, you know that.”

She does know that. She also knows that Aziraphale is hardly a typical angel, and not just because she’s stolen him in pieces over thousands of years. He’s been broken since before they met, only not the kind of broken that makes you fall. He’s broken because he’s  _ better.  _

He would have liked Yeshua, she thinks. They would have challenged each other. The young man was a carpenter, not a theologian, not a priest, hardly even a prophet. Is that why Heaven wouldn’t let them meet? Were the other angels afraid that he’d get Ideas? Did they believe that Aziraphale would ask questions, and Yeshua would answer? Or did they just arbitrarily decide he wasn’t worthy enough?

Heaven doesn’t deserve Aziraphale any more than God does. It’s a good thing he’s Crowley’s.

“I haven’t heard of any Divine Inspirations recently,” she says, instead of bringing all of  _ that  _ up to him. He’s not ready for it, and maybe he never will be. She’s not sure  _ she’s  _ ready for it, because to say it all would mean to say where it’s coming from. 

He nods in agreement with a small hum and a short squeeze to her hands. “Yes, Heaven’s been moving away from that sort of thing. There are certain expectations now — and  _ someone  _ made it difficult to inspire women to do what needs to be done. There are strange gendered rules that people  _ insist  _ came from the Almighty. Can’t imagine what happened there.”

“They’ll grow out of it,” she says, not truly believing her own words. Leaning closer, she murmurs, “You could inspire them, couldn’t you? Certain key figures?”

“Not without permission, no. But  _ you  _ could,” he suggests. “You may be a demon, but surely you know how to clean up your own messes.”

With a frown, she denies, “I told you, demons don’t inspire-”

“Of course they do. Or at least  _ you  _ do.”

Her chest feels so warm, suddenly, that she has no choice but to squeeze his hands and hope he doesn’t notice. Hope she isn’t  _ actually blushing.  _ Her body isn’t prone to doing that, but that doesn’t mean her body can’t do it. “I do?”

“You inspire  _ me,” _ the angel admits into Crowley’s neck, but before the demon can respond, Aziraphale brings her hands to their sides and laces their fingers together. Leaning closer, Aziraphale whispers into Crowley’s ear, “I told you, it’s only a lighter temptation. Did you think I wasn’t watching you work? Let me show you what  _ you _ do, when you’re  _ not  _ being inspiring. Let me prove to you that it’s the same.”

“Oh,  _ yes,”  _ she breathes. How could she refuse? They won’t say it, either of them, but Aziraphale isn’t going to inspire her. He’s going to tempt her. That’s an intoxicating thought.

But suddenly, he cuts off with a worried look and says, “Oh, no. We’ll have to pick this up shortly — I just remembered, I  _ must  _ finish a transcription. Go and sit down over there, won’t you, my darling?”

She scowls, feeling the vestiges of Crawly rise up in her.  _ What Crawly wants, Crawly should get.  _ But she’s different now, and if she wants to be patient, she can be patient! She could wait until the end of the world! Aziraphale isn’t as sneaky as he thinks he is. Deliberately and very carefully, she transforms her scowl into a smile, picks herself up in a most serpentine fashion, and says, “Of course,  _ angel.  _ I’ll be waiting.”

“Thank you. So very much.”

How silly of him. 

She looks on as he moves over to a table, continuing what looks like a half-written letter but probably isn’t. He called it a transcription. He bites at the inside of his bottom lip for a moment while he focuses, and she tries not to be jealous of an  _ object.  _ It’s only a job, and he’ll be done soon. She’s patient. Crowley doesn’t need to touch him, or bite his lip, or sit on him again, because he’s  _ already  _ hers. It doesn’t matter if —  _ it doesn’t matter— _

It does matter. How dare he? How dare he say that and then just send her off to watch him do something so  _ dull?  _

She hisses under her breath, walks the three steps it takes to get from her place to his new one, and pulls his chair away from the table so that she can straddle his lap. “I didn’t come here to watch you  _ work,  _ Aziraphale.”

He cocks his head to the side. Rubs callused, scribe’s fingers along the apple of her cheek and down the curve of her face: it feels so nice that her mouth drops open, just a little, and her eyelids droop. He presses his forehead to hers and says, “Tell me what you want, then, Crowley. It may be that we want the same things.”

The words  _ pull  _ at her. She wants to want the same things, because she wants him to want her. He is hers, but she wants him to acknowledge that. She wants him to understand it, to accept it, to embrace it. “I want you to — ah,  _ oh.” _

One of his hands runs through her hair, scrapes along her scalp, and the other runs up and down her spine. It feels so  _ nice.  _ He’s not being particularly intimate, or at least, not as intimate as they have been before; he’s just rubbing places he knows from experience will relax her. Maybe he knows how tense she’s been. Her assignment, to oversee the crucifixion of a man she knew well, was  _ so hard.  _ Her head drops onto his shoulder and she finishes, “I want to feel better. I want you to make me better.”

“I’m afraid that’s just not possible, foul fiend,” he says, tugging playfully on her long curls, “but I can make you softer for a little while. Would you like that, precious thing? Would you like to fall apart?”

She feels. Oh, she  _ feels,  _ and he’s been tempting her all along. He made her anxious, made her impatient, made her come to him, and now he’s offering her something she wants. Maybe he can give it to her. She wouldn’t put it past him. She feels warm, wrapped up in the power he’s radiating, and is  _ this  _ what the humans feel when she tempts them? No wonder they do it. She’s perfectly in control of herself, but she can’t think of a single reason to say no, when saying yes would feel so good.

Instant gratification.

“Try it,” she says, moving her lips against his neck. It isn’t a kiss. She’s not sure it’s a demand. If she didn’t know better, she might call it a prayer, but she does know better.

“You must open yourself to me,” he tells her carefully. He does not stop stroking her, but he doesn’t move from her spine, either. She could tell him to stop. She doesn’t want him to. “I will not invade you, Crowley.”

“Maybe I want you to,” she challenges. She  _ doesn’t  _ want him to, but she wants to see what he’ll say. How far can she push him? How far will he take this game? Is he still her pretty toy soldier, or does he ask more questions?

“You don’t, or you wouldn’t have said maybe. Wicked creature. I don’t have infinite time, not for this; if you don’t want to let me in, I have other things-”

She remembers how to share. She offers a piece of her metaphysical self before he can retreat, the inside of her where she stored the stolen seed millennia ago, and he takes it. Their connection is not wild this time; Aziraphale is much more controlled, much more focused. He uses his hands to guide her into a leaning position against him, and then moves to knead her — hips, sides, upper back, shoulders, a long, luxurious, smoothing press down her spine again. Everywhere he touches is simultaneously set aflame and forcibly relaxed under his cosmic attentions, and all she can do is hold onto him, dig her fingers into his sides.

The rolls are soft, the kind of beautiful feeling she wishes she could keep with her. Crowley likes soft things, and maybe she likes them because her angel is soft, or maybe she likes her angel because she likes soft things, but she wants more of him, so she rubs her cheek against his shoulder. Broad and soft as she remembers. He moves his hands over the small swell of her hips and down to the outsides of her thighs, and her whole body shudders at the feeling of — of Aziraphale,  _ pouring himself into her,  _ and the implicit invitation to crawl inside of him in return. She can’t help it. Why wouldn’t she accept? What could feel better than that, in this moment?

She flows through the open door and nestles in him, touching him from the inside. She sparks with lightning-sharp joy even as the great depths of him terrify her beyond measure. Her physical body quakes as the intensity grows; Aziraphale might not be experiencing this in the same way, but Crowley is getting  _ lost in him,  _ she’s  _ drowning,  _ he’s vast and shining and horrific and she wants out! She can’t — she  _ can’t find her way out,  _ his essence is labyrinthine,  _ letmeoutletmeoutletmeout _

Last-ditch attempt to save them both: she forces a knife into her hand, even from so deep inside Aziraphale she doesn’t know how to resurface. She can see her own body through his eyes, and it jerks to life, stabbing at him gracelessly. When he lets her go, her own body pulls her back in, and she’s still shaking, and she feels like she could hold the world in her hands and she feels like she could kill God and it’s too much, she can’t  _ handle it,  _ she wants out of this incorporation, she wants. She wants.

She wants to discorporate again, and she wants Aziraphale to do it. How sweet that would be, a perfect climax to a deep, dark temptation.

She attacks viciously, ignoring his attempts to talk her down. He tries to hold her and she hisses, bites, sticks her blade into him. It hardly goes in, but he jumps back and says, “Please, don’t make me do this.”

“I’m a  _ demon,”  _ she replies gleefully through a mouthful of angel blood, feeling herself go higher and higher. “If you don’t get me, I’ll get you, eventually. Did you really think I’d just let you have your way with me without getting my own in return?”

Furniture is overturned, work materials are scattered. Crowley feels like she’s walking on clouds. She feels like she’s nearly reached  _ Heaven  _ again, but this time, it’s only herself and her angel. Gloria,  _ gloria. _

“Then you leave me no choice,” he says mournfully, and turns her own knife on her. As she lets go of her ties to Earth, her entire essence  _ heaves,  _ and she doesn’t think she’s ever felt this good in all the time she’s existed.

She collapses, boneless, spent, on the ground beside the reception desk in Hell. That was a temptation, all right. It just wasn’t like any temptation she’s ever seen, because Aziraphale gave of himself. He gave and gave and then, when he should have stopped, when she acted out and attacked him, he gave her the exact climax she wanted. Temptation isn’t supposed to be selfless. Aziraphale is a  _ force. _

“What,” says the receptionist, coming out from behind the desk and crouching down to look at her, “happened to you?”

“Think I might have just had sex,” she replies thickly. It’s basically true, lack of genitalia notwithstanding. It was more than sharing, they were truly  _ inside  _ each other, for a moment she was  _ in his body, _ and then when she goaded him into discorporating her, it was such a powerful release. She’s  _ still  _ shaking, even on another plane of existence.

“Oh! That’s not generally your department. Dabbling in lust, are we? Have you got a name for the incoming corrupted soul?”

“Er.” Crowley lifts her head, waves a hand, and collapses again. “Didn’t get to...finish the process. Angel discorporated me. Soul intact. Bye-bye, opportunity.”

“It was that Principality again, wasn’t it? Aziraphale. He’s the only one who ever manages to catch you.”

Displaying all of her millennia of knowledge, Crowley avoids getting caught out with an intelligent, “Ngk.”

The receptionist sighs and stands. “Tell you what, Crawly-”

_ “Crowley.” _

“Whatever. We all make mistakes. Some of us make very  _ stupid  _ mistakes, but most of them are small enough to be...overlooked. If you bring me something sweet from above, I think we can keep this particular mistake to ourselves.”

“Ngk,” she says for the second time. It sounds as dumb as it did the first time. That’s fine. Once she’s regained fine motor function, she’ll probably never say it again.


	10. Chapter 10

“Restaurant” is the wrong word for this place. Gaius Petronius is not well-known to Crowley, who has little interest in both literature and politics, but the concept of a restaurant is clearly even less well-known to Petronius. The man himself isn’t there, and there is hardly enough room for three people to sit and enjoy the food. It’s more like a place where there is food, and also a couple of confused people, and also more people who are angry they don’t rate special treatment.

(That’s an idea. Too bad the humans already invented exclusive patronage; large-scale jealousy and bitter class divide would surely be job security for centuries, maybe even earn him a commendation. Maybe he can find a way to spin it anyway.)

“I...heard you can pay for it and leave,” Aziraphale says hesitantly. “I suppose we could take it back to — to where I-”

“I would absolutely _ love _to see your lodgings,” Crowley says, playing up the drama. He’s sick of this assignment. He hates overseeing leadership fuckery, and Caligula isn’t even fun. There’s no reason for Aziraphale to be so timid here; what happened between them was perfect. It was exactly what Crowley wanted. His angel’s gotten him before, and there’s never been any of this lingering tension between them. 

“Right.” Aziraphale draws himself up and, thankfully, looks more like his old self. “You could always come back with me tomorrow, anyway — my name’s down for it. I’ve been meaning to figure out this sleep thing; perhaps you can teach me that today, and tomorrow I’ll teach you how to eat an oyster.”

“Could do,” Crowley says. He leans closer. “Sleeping together could be fun.”

“Yes, I thought so. I can’t seem to get the brain part right. It won’t shut down. Come on, then, I’ll show you the way,” the angel says, either missing the intimation, or choosing to ignore it. Once, Crowley might have assumed the former. Now, he’s not so sure. 

(In any case, his has his own plans; when Aziraphale is distracted by the irritation of a man blocking the door, Crowley does the demonic equivalent of a miracle, and looks forward to what’s coming next.)

  


Demonic magic is looser than the angelic type. Technically speaking, it is the same power that God gifted them all with, but demons by nature are a perversion; Crowley, for example, can manipulate time the way an angel never could, not because they don’t have the power, but because it’s _ wrong. _ The act of stopping God’s design goes against everything in them. Aziraphale probably has enough imagination and disregard for convention that he _ could _ do it, but Crowley doubts that he ever _ would; _the idiot still believes, after everything, that God is good and correct.

When they are situated, the angel on the bed ready to lie down and Crowley kneeling up next to him, Crowley allows the time-release magic to complete itself and the oysters he stole back at the restaurant suddenly materialize. This is not the parlor trick of rearranging atoms to send them elsewhere, but a localized time-stop. He’s _ very _proud of it. He hopes it’ll make Aziraphale gag.

The angel, bless him, only looks impressed. “How did you buy those right under my nose?”

Oh, for the love of — _ really? _ “I _ stole _ them. I’m a _ demon. _ I have a _ quota, _ you...you _ angel.” _ He makes it clear in his expression what he thinks of _ angels. _“I stopped time and made you think we didn’t have any. Now you have to make a choice between-”

Aziraphale rolls his eyes, pulls out two coins, and — with a wave of his hand that does _ not _pull any celestial energy from Heaven — makes them disappear. “No choice necessary. I’ve paid for them.”

“You can…” Crowley blinks several times very rapidly, trying to make sense of what he just saw. “You can send things away to a specific location? Without _ seeing _it?”

That shouldn’t be possible. It just shouldn’t. There are limits to everyone’s power; God could do it, of course, but She put limits on angels for a reason. They can’t hide anything without losing track of it themselves. That’s why they can’t miraculously transport themselves from one location to another without a Divine anchor at each end. His angel smiles indulgently and says, “It’s human magic. I’ve made a hobby of breaking down their inventions into pieces to try and figure out how it all works. It’s _ fascinating, _how they’ve managed to incorporate transdimensional mechanics without-”

“Yeah, I’d rather learn about oysters,” Crowley admits. He recognizes that tone well enough from tempting scholars. If he lets Aziraphale start in on that, he’ll forget Crowley’s even there, and — well, he wants Aziraphale to pay attention to him, now that they’re in the same place again. 

“Really? I’d thought you’d be interested, having been an architect. The math should be easy for you. Ah, well, oysters are just as nice.”

(No, the math _ shouldn’t _be easy for Crowley. He’s very good at a few things, pre-temporal astrophysics being one of them, but it’s not like being good at painting makes you good at all the arts, is it? Magic and miracles are another field of study entirely.)

“So, teach me about them,” he suggests.

“Right.” Aziraphale takes one from the tray, which Crowley stole as an unintentional side effect of the initial oyster theft. Extra mischief is always good, maybe not right away, but as a write-off in his accounting. “Hmm, I suppose we’ll have to use our fingers. You want to push the flesh around just a bit, like so-” The angel does, nearly stroking the little muscle inside the shell. “-because you don’t want to try to eat it if it’s still attached to the shell. And then you bring the shell up like this, and tip back, and…”

It looks like drinking, a bit, so Crowley thinks he can probably manage it. Most of his eating experiments have been underwhelming. He doesn’t like dry foods, like grains and vegetables — things that come out of the ground — because they all taste like dust, as God’s curse intended. Meat is hardly better. He hasn’t ever tried wet foods, the kind that comes out of the sea, because by the time he knew that was possible, he’d already decided against eating. The humans do things to their foods now that make them more tolerable, but it tastes funny sometimes. He likes the alcohol; maybe this will be just like that.

He pokes at an oyster, deliberating. Should he eat it or not? Will it taste like dust? Will Aziraphale want to know why he isn’t eating more if he hates it? Why does he even _ care? _ That’s stupid. He doesn’t care about the angel’s _ feelings. _He tips the shell over his face and grimaces as the liquid drips onto his chin. He chokes on the oyster meat in surprise.

“Oh, goodness,” Aziraphale frets, pulling a cloth from nothing and wiping Crowley’s face with it. He bats the angel’s hand away. “One would think, being a snake…”

“M not a snake in _ bipedal _form,” he lies, annoyed. Mostly because Aziraphale is actually, technically, correct. He still has scales sometimes, when he forgets to hide them. His eyes will never change, no matter how hard he tries. He shouldn’t have choked, especially on something that small.

“And you probably didn’t even get to taste it!”

“That’s all right. You finish them. Sleeping is always easier on a full stomach.”

_ Why _ is he saying this? It’s not his job to make Aziraphale feel better. He doesn’t even _ want _ to. But he doesn’t stop, either, and in fact, he waves his hand toward the tray as if to say _ go ahead. _

The angel sighs, looking fond, and asks, “Won’t you at least come up here with me?”

“I’m good here,” Crowley denies. He _ is. _From this angle, he can see everything. He can kneel down or up, get close or lean away. He doesn’t have to touch, but he can, if he wants. And if he feels like annoying Aziraphale, he can steal another oyster and throw it out the window.

“Then you may stay there.”

He snorts. “How _ magnanimous.” _

“I must apologize, for last time,” Aziraphale says once another oyster is down his throat. Crowley watches the spectacle, fascinated by the curves of the angel’s neck. He really ought not be that pretty. “I shouldn’t have discorporated you.”

“Why not? I tried to kill you.”

“Did you?”

Crowley grabs Aziraphale’s hand and brings it to his mouth. He loves these hands, plump and soft and strong enough to dislocate a demon’s shoulder. Aziraphale’s hands have always been lovely, in every incorporation, even the skinny one with bulging knuckles. Crowley’s eyes close behind his glasses and his tongue slips out to get a taste of the brine on the angel’s fingers, first, second, and then the thumb. When he opens his eyes, Aziraphale has his other hand over his mouth below wide, wide eyes, and the tray is nowhere to be seen. So it worked. Humans do this sometimes, pamper or arouse each other to prompt forgetfulness during an uncomfortable conversation. For added effect, Crowley kisses the knuckles he’s just licked.

“Oh, Crowley, what are-”

“Falling for the temptation,” Crowley murmurs with another kiss of that gorgeous hand. “You’re right. Oysters taste _ divine.” _

“You can’t...distract me. I...I know that you were trying to get yourself killed. I won’t be your instrument of self-harm, Crowley,” he says with a soft kiss to Crowley’s brow that barely lasts a moment and feels like eight years of separation. Only a small turn of the tables, but it _ hurts _to be so close now that he’s aware of himself. “I won’t discorporate you again.”

Slyly — because desperation is a bad look on a demon — Crowley grins, nibbles on Aziraphale’s index finger, and asks, “What if I try to kill you?”

Aziraphale sighs and, dropping his free hand, runs his blunt nails through Crowley’s hair. Coming back with short hair was a stupid idea. “Then you’ll kill me, and I’ll have to fill out embarrassing paperwork in triplicate. I’d rather not. That’s entirely up to you.”

This isn’t how it’s supposed to go. Aziraphale is an angel, a warrior. Full of fire and righteous judgment, that’s how upper angels _ are, _ that’s why Hastur is such an effective punisher, that’s why Satan can only lead through fear. Crowley managed to escape that by being a nobody who got swept up in the romanticism of proving God wrong, but Aziraphale should be happy to smite Crowley where he stands, not...not willing to just _ lie down and take it! _

He bites harder, hard enough to draw blood, but all the angel does is tug the hair at the base of Crowley’s neck and relax again. He’s doing the angel meditation thing, isn’t he? He really is a bastard. Just taking and taking and not giving Crowley what he wants. “Well, what if I come at you with Hellfire?”

Aziraphale twists the hand Crowley’s been biting and grips Crowley’s chin hard enough to bruise. He jerks Crowley’s head up sharply, vanishing his glasses (his _armor),_ and in their eye contact, there are millennia of unspoken longings that shouldn’t exist. Crowley feels small and miserable and like he never stopped being Crawly, or at least, never deserved to do anything other than squirm at Aziraphale’s feet after all. “Then my replacement will find you and destroy you, likely with holy water. A life for a life, to keep the balance. They don’t particularly like me up there, but they do love me, and vengeance comes naturally to angels.”

“Not you,” <strike>Crawly</strike> Crowley manages.

“Especially me.” The angel’s tone softens. “Please don’t test this, Crowley. I’ve made up my mind. I shall be very upset with you if you try to use me again.”

“I don’t care,” he snarls, and then presses forward into Aziraphale’s space. His original intent was to spit in his face, but halfway through the signals got mixed and instead, he presses his lips against Aziraphale’s, hard, angry, and maybe this is okay too. Surely the angel can just move the hand he’s been using to steady Crowley’s head, move it down the column of Crowley’s neck and _ snap _it for taking without asking, and then he’ll find that release he’s been looking for, the attention he needs. 

But that doesn’t happen. The hand does move down Crowley’s neck, soft and delicate, and lands on Crowley’s shoulder. Aziraphale’s mouth moves against his, and his thumb circles firmly against Crowley’s collarbone, and fuzzily, he wonders, _ have you done this since last time, angel? Is it supposed to be like this? _ Because even as Crowley crowds forward, slips onto Aziraphale’s lap and greedily fists the fabric along Aziraphale’s chest — even as Aziraphale makes a soft, helpless noise and grabs Crowley’s bony hip in what he can only hope is desire — Crowley feels less and less in control of this...whatever _ this _is.

_ Gloria in excelsis Aziraphale— _

Aziraphale tilts his head to the side, licks long and slow from the base of Crowley’s Hellmark to the hollow of his throat and begins a series of little nibbles there, following the wet line like the good little soldier he pretends to be, and it’s all Crowley can do to _ hold on, _ just grip fabric and wind his rapidly-scaling foot around Aziraphale’s calf and try not to shake out of his body. He wanted attention, and now he has it, the kind of singular focus and dedication he’s only ever gotten in sharing and fights to the death before. He could drown in Aziraphale’s light. _ Wants to, _ he realizes — he’d kneel quiet and compliant in payment, just for a moment more of this obscene Grace, and _ this is what it feels like to worship, _and he’s sick. 

Disgusting — he’s a _ demon, _ he shouldn’t — he pushes himself up, stumbles back with unnecessary heavy breaths. His whole form feels like it’s burning. Aziraphale’s lips are beautifully plush and his eyes are shining bright like stars, _ Crowley’s _ stars, and this is rich, isn’t it, he thought he was laying claim to the angel, _ stealing _him, but he was only laying groundwork for his own humiliation, giving himself piece by wretched piece to this cruel creature who won’t take advantage. Wouldn’t even know how, probably.

“You’re pathetic,” he spits, mostly at himself. Aziraphale is supposed to be his plaything. This isn’t how it’s supposed to work.

“As you say,” Aziraphale replies, looking as though he’s just been handed something he doesn’t know how to use. It’s how Crowley might look if you handed him a flaming sword.

“Don’t follow me. I have to see a man about a dagger,” Crowley says, dramatically twirling on the spot and stalking out. 

Aziraphale says nothing. When Crowley peeks through the window from outside, the angel is still sitting in the same place, touching his lips thoughtfully, and Crowley could break something.


	11. Chapter 11

It’s been two centuries when Aziraphale comes to him in the cell.

The locals are a superstitious bunch, and this time Crowley hasn’t even done anything bad (yet). They don’t like the look of him, so he’s going to be executed. And they may not be smart, but they  _ are  _ prepared; they have somehow gotten their hands on chains that will bind a demon, even one like Crowley who has ties to both worlds. These ties have given him an unexpected power boost, yes, but it’s not enough to break the binding on him. Almost as bad are the surroundings — plain wood, a pathetic amount of straw,  _ nothing  _ to amuse him, but at least he won’t be here for long, now that his angel is here.

“Oh, my dear,” Aziraphale murmurs, looking at him with pity. “I didn’t realize they had caught  _ you!  _ I’m afraid this one will be agony. The locals like to be creative with their executions.”

“Right, right, yes, I was stupid to come here,” Crowley grinds out. “Spare me the lecture and get me out. This binding  _ hurts.” _

“I’m not going to rescue you.”

Crowley scowls up at the angel, who looks saddened by his own words. “Why  _ not?” _

“You said, last time...you used a word. Pathetic. Perhaps you’re right,” Aziraphale says carefully. “I have no right to protect you. It’s as you always say: you’re a demon, and I’m an angel. I can’t redeem you-”

“I don’t want to be  _ redeemed,”  _ Crowley spits. Is  _ that  _ what Aziraphale’s been playing at? 

“Yes, exactly! My purpose is to guard Her and protect Her creations, and you already know that very early on, you became _part _of that again. I will always believe that you are a better alternative to the other tempters, because you...well, you’re good at your job. The best, really. And while it’s inconvenient for _me _to have such a competent enemy, it means the humans are safe from demonic _violence. _But including you as one of my charges, I think, does us both a disservice. So I’m done being pathetic, Crowley. I won’t hurt you anymore.”

“So, what, you’re just going to let the humans get away with killing a man? You know if they kill me, they’ll think it’s okay to do it again,” he argues. This isn’t how he thought things would go at all. Why  _ now,  _ of all times, must Aziraphale take him seriously?

The angel’s face darkens. “Certainly not. They will be judged, and very soon. I got permission to reveal myself to them.”

“So do it before! You can’t expect me to believe you’re really  _ okay  _ with watching-”

Aziraphale dissolves. He’s not gone, but he’s no longer visible; it’s a trick that is as uncomfortable as it is inconvenient, so most occult things never bother to do it. The humans come in almost immediately, yank Crowley to his feet, and pull him by his burning bonds out of the holding place, some house or barn or something, Crowley never got a good look at it. He only manages to wriggle his head free when they’re a good distance away, and there the angel is, watching. Doing nothing to stop them.

_ Shelter me,  _ he pleads silently. Aziraphale is too far away to hear, but he  _ must  _ be able to see it in Crowley’s face.  _ I was wrong. Please have mercy. _

Aziraphale turns away, looking very sorry indeed.

Well, fine, then. Crowley’s been looking for a change anyway. Aziraphale might think he’s done with Crowley, but Crowley’s not done with him! He’ll make the angel see what it feels like to be stifled —  _ smothered —  _ by someone who just won’t quit doing the thing! He’ll step in for a rescue when Aziraphale doesn’t need it, and make him sure of his place, and...and  _ all of those things,  _ because it’s not like Aziraphale can just make a unilateral decision like that, Aziraphale is  _ his  _ angel, his friend,  _ the one he loves— _

Oh.

_ Oh. _

This is the culmination of thousands of years of chasing after Aziraphale, of allowing himself to be caught. He has  _ always  _ wanted special attention from the angel. From the moment they met, Crowley has sought out that attention, even at the expense of his own incorporations. He has poked and prodded and lied for it. And Aziraphale has obliged him, has never pretended he doesn’t love Crowley even when he doesn’t like him very much.

For thousands of years, Crowley has been reckless, because he knew — he  _ always  _ knew — that Aziraphale was the only one who was allowed to hurt him. An unspoken rule, like the one from the desert in the beginning. He found himself nudged out of the way when the  _ real  _ angels, the frightening ones, were on the hunt. Demons who had grudges against him found themselves brutally dispatched before they could even  _ think  _ about the kind of mischief Crowley gets up to right under Aziraphale’s nose. His angel has faith in him. His angel believes that he’s better than everyone else in Hell, and even though Aziraphale doesn’t think of him as a threat, he has (for the most part) treated him like an equal.

And Crowley likes it. He likes the attention, he likes the special treatment. He likes being sheltered as much as he likes being discorporated because  _ they are the same thing.  _ It’s all Aziraphale: it’s why Gabriel terrifies Crowley, even though all he ever did was make some threats. Demons don’t love, but it’s only because they  _ don’t,  _ not because they  _ can’t. _

Forget being executed,  _ this  _ is the worst thing that could happen to him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you made it all the way to the end of this much darker fic without wanting to throw your computer or handheld device and shout about tedium, thank you for enduring, and for the opportunity to blaspheme at strangers. There should be one more installment in this series that covers the events of The Arrangement up to the beginning of the book/show, and possibly a little epilogue that shows them squaring up afterward. Maybe, also, another little thing from Aziraphale's point of view, showing his perspective on their rather fucked up relationship, and his reasons for Being Soft, considering his book characterization. I don't know. He's hard to write.


End file.
